


Blue Social

by EarthScorpion



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Science Fiction, noir, seriously when I said it was noir I meant it, the main character is a chain-smoking asari PI, xenofiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-25
Updated: 2014-11-20
Packaged: 2018-04-05 20:27:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 25,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4193739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EarthScorpion/pseuds/EarthScorpion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You want to know my story?  Think it'll be a nice little tale that'll be all cheerful and end with a heartwarming message?  Oh, I'll tell you it.  We can sit here in this bar in Nos Cthon and as long as you keep buying me drinks, I'll tell you it.  At the start of it, I was just another PI on Ilium, doing what jobs I could do to get by.  Then everything changed when she walked in.  And since then, my life's just been a whirl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

I'm alive. I quite honestly thought I wouldn't be, after all that.

I sit back in the cafe, beside a park in Nos Cthon. I'm not going back to Nos Astra. I can't face the sights; can't face the sounds. That's what I always say, and I fully expect that I'll end up being pulled back there in a few months, when I get bored, or when people stop wanting me around here. I've always found it's better to leave before you get kicked out. But for now, there is sunlight, and there is quiet.

I've picked up a room for cheap in the Dominaruyan quarter. It's close to the bars, and sometimes I sit at the tables outside, under the cool green shade of the plants. I've always found vegetation to be reassuring, and back in Nos Astra people sometimes forget that. I had a wonderful collection of plants in my office, enough that Erzala used to complain it was walking into a jungle. I liked my plants.

Well, they're gone now. Erzala and the plants alike.

The barman, a bitter-faced turian brings me another drink. She's indentured, I can tell, but I don't care. I did idly consider what had led her to this place in life, but I couldn't bring myself to find out. For now, I revel in ignorance, take joy in knowinglessness. I wave her away, with no tip. She took too long to bring it. The drink is sweet, and tastes of amony and alcohol, but there's some bitter yellow fruit sliced into it. The board said it was the house special. It's not bad. Good enough to down, at least.

I shudder as the chemicals hit my brain, and sigh.

Nos Cthon is smaller than Nos Astra, and rather more polar. It's summer now, so the only difference is that it isn't quite as intolerably hot as Nos Astra can get, but in the winter, there is snow and there is skiing. It's a company city, through and through, on this coast of limestone and chalk. I've been out hiking; and there are birds living in the caves that riddle this place. Some of them have lost flight entirely, their wings becoming forelimbs, that they use to clamber around the caves. They're almost becoming like my very, very distant ancestors, back in the forests of Thessia.

And despite this being away from the too-tight, too-close urban rises of Nos Astra, I can still see _it_. Now my eyes have been opened, it's hard to miss. The horror of realisation and the realisation of horror is everywhere. Beside me, in the part, children play. They look to be in first decade, running around without a care in the world. The mother of one plays with her daughter, throwing a ball to her; the daughter catches it, and throws it back. The daughter misses one, and the ball rolls away, down a slope. She chases it for a bit, sprinting for all she's worth, and then gives up. She can't be bothered to chase it that far. It's not fun anymore.

A turian child would have chased it all the way down the slope. So would a quarian child, or a human child. A batarian child wouldn't have, however.

The streets are wide and open, boulevards heavy with trees, and between the towers floral walkways blossom like flower-covered branches. The silent hum of aerocars is a background noise as I light up my cigarette, and take a deep drag, blowing green-tinted smoke up. Through the haze, I can see the cars flocking together, the smaller city and more lax civil authorities letting the fliers find their own ways around. There is spontaneous order in these patterns; they _flock_ , they _swarm_ , moving together in convoys which peel off as they reach their destinations, like a destrier and her young. None of them know they're doing it, of course. It's just the way that the permitted airspaces guide them, and their navigation systems recommend it to be done. Any of them could pull right up and fly away, fly free. They mostly don't. There's safety in numbers. Safety in groups. And when one does just break away, fly for themselves, I can guess that they're not asari, turian, human, salarian or quarian, or even a krogan who isn't being a young macho idiot. Even vorcha flock like birds when put behind the wheel of an aerocar.

You know who doesn't?

Sociopaths who haven't learned to hide themselves. I once solved a case and that was one of the clues the psyche-analysis VI picked up on which clued me into the culprit. Funny, isn't it? The rule-breaking outsiders who cut through the red-tape are usually fucked in the head. Not really much of a surprise, is it? The descriptions of the mythological heroes of societies and the champions of legend give pretty interesting results when checked on one of those VIs. When we look at how those are the traits that societies claim to value, and yet condemn, it's all a fucking joke. Look at the turians – and while you're at it, look at humans too, who are basically just turians who look like pink-brown asari when it comes down to the way they think – and look at their cultural heroes. They're both barely civilised as it is, and the worst bit is I know that when I say that, that's just the cultural context produced by asari history and biology talking to me.

It's all a fucking joke. Just as funny as the claim that your median asari has any chance of seeing her Matron stage. You think it's a coincidence we're socially and biologically encouraged to be risk-takers when we're Maidens?

I down the next drink as soon as it comes. I think I could grow to like it. Yeah. Get drunk here, space out the drinks until nightfall so I stay conscious, and then hit the nightclubs. Pick someone up who doesn't even ask my name, and who won't even want to ring me the morning after. That'd feel good. I know it's the drinks whispering that to me, and I'm just missing having my pets around. They burned, along with my office. At the moment, I don't really care. I just want to get drunk, get high and find someone to brain-fuck. And it's not even midday yet.

Because when I'm like that, when the buzzing mix of elements from zero up to... something in the double digits... yeah, when that structure of _stuff_ in my skull isn't thinking properly, the recollections of things I've seen don't paint themselves across my closed eyelids.

I loll back on my seat slightly, and exhale another cloud of smoke, tapping the ash off the cigarette. When I close my eyes, I can see those tanks, the blue-skinned zygotes within flapping their fish-like protolimbs. I can hear the calls in the forest, and my heart beating in my ears like a drum. The silence of the alcoves envelops me; the quiet of being deafened. The first time I met _that_ woman, sleek and black-clad and oh-so-beautiful, and the recognition that she was trouble. The failure to recognise just what kind of trouble she was. Erzala screams, and fire envelops us – I can see it in the embers of my cigarette, even as I shudder and take another drag. And above all, I can see it in the map of my omnitool. Because there, I can see the way the corporations spread and grow, their daughter-colonies owned by the daughters of the founder, the links and ties of the mothers and daughters who are as closely related to their own sisters as they are to their own children. I've had my eyes opened to the incentives of life itself in the roughest way, and they're as pitiless and as cruel as anyone I've met.

It's funny, really. I'm – I am? I was? – a private investigator, paid to find out truths that at least one other person didn't want me to know. But these things that I didn't want to know, these undesired truths which got Erzala killed were set in motion by a family gathering. And I wasn't even paid for finding them.


	2. Chapter 2

That was how my story ends, sitting in a bar in Nos Cthon. In which case, we might as well move onto the beginning, which takes place at a family reunion in an estate on the fourth world of the Trefi system, under the blue-white light of its star.

No, of course it doesn't really start there, and for that matter, it doesn't end there either, because I fully intend to keep on living as long as I possibly can and don't intend to off myself when I finish this just to give you a sense of closure. But it's a good nominal starting point, because to be frank I simply cannot be bothered to search further back into the depths of time for some infinitely receded eternal "before". Go ask some archaeologist or historian or whatever if you want a complete history of the galaxy.

I was one hundred and sixty-one. I had wormed somewhat out from under my mother's thumb, in a way that she had never managed from my grandmother. I was a relatively respectable asari, in the Maiden phase of my lifecycle, and it was generally expected that in a few decades, I would move to take over or found a new branch of the family empire, and prepare for the transition to Motherhood. I was already beating the odds by having lasted as long as I had, and the fact that I was not running around in some backwater as a mercenary, but was instead a sensible private investigator on Ilium spoke well of my future prospects.

But for all my avowed freedom, I was still obliged to go to family gatherings. My grandmother would have had the skull of any As'koni who didn't have a good reason for absence. Like 'being dead'. And even then, she would really prefer that our bodies be returned in cryostorage so that the family could mourn the dearly departed together.

Bah.

And that meant that I was sitting at a carefully calculated place on one of five very long tables, just another similar-looking pale blue face among others. I hadn't even got any choice in what I wore, because my mother had had _words_ with me and everyone else about the styles which would be permitted. Looking around, clearly my grandmother had also been having _words_ with all her daughters about the need to have words with their daughters. It was an immaculate display of exquisite style.

It was disgusting, uncomfortable, and the new dress was leaving my legs and midsection to get cold. I hate dresses so much. You can't run properly in them, which is just unforgivable. By the Goddess, I really can't stand the anthropoid tendencies in modern fashion. Every single idiot fashion designer has started putting features from human clothing as the latest trend, and I detest it. Yes, really, let's put stupid things from the culturally inferior gender of a bi-sexed species into the clothes _I_ have to wear, just because the humans happened to the closest fleet to the Citadel when the geth attacked. Does everyone need to fall over themselves admiring a backwater underdeveloped species that has a total economy smaller than some city-states?

The worst bit is the romanticism which some people like to cram onto humans. That for their short lives, they're "like us" just because they – especially their females – look like us, and fashion designers can even have us wearing the same styles. I suspect it's a sexual thing, honestly; that all those anti-pureblood bigots actually don't find aliens as attractive as they like to claim in public, and that humans have nice, comforting, almost-asari faces and bodies. At least if you can ignore the keratin – the same thing they make their fingernails out of – strands growing out of their heads.

It's laughable, really. Humans aren't asari. Sure, they may look similar, but behind their eyes, they're alien; much more like turians. Way, way more like turians, actually; it's a thankful thing that those idiots make such a fuss about that relay incident (calling it the 'First Contact War'? How amusing – if they'd really been in a war with the turians they'd have really known it), or else we'd have to be concerned about them voting as a block on the Council.

One might ask why I go off on such a tangent. The answer would be because my second-close-older surviving sister had bought her new mayfly-boyfriend with her, and the dark-skinned man was sitting there like a poleaxed varren. He may have been drooling, or he might have just been incompetent at drinking; either way the keratin growths from his face were already wetted with wine.

Yes, I do know the words "hair" and "beard". I just choose not to use them. The keratin growths are repulsive and unhygienic, considering that humans _shed_. You wouldn't let people whose skin was flaking sit at dinner tables, would you? Or a vorcha who couldn't keep their drool under control – if you could find a vorcha with table manners, at least? No, of course not.

Examples of other species were breaking the sea of blue, of course, but he was the one sitting closest to me, and I was being expected to make polite conversation with another one of Televa's toys. She had previously shown her terrible taste in partners, and from the inane babble this one was producing, she had not improved.

"So," I said, smiling without a trace of my inner revulsion showing on my face, "please, this is fascinating. How did you meet?"

"Oh, well, that's an interesting story," he said. That was a lie. The two of them were staring into each other's eyes like a pair of hungry seranids confronted with raw meat, and going on and on and on.

And on. And on.

"… so she lay down suppressive fire, and I crawled under the barrage to try to find the spare grenades and…"

By the Goddess, I really wanted a smoke. I had a patch on under the dress, but the slow drip was never quite the same as the proper kick of a good cigarette. And I couldn't have one.

"… well, of course, I drew my knife and tossed it to her, and then she biotically fired it like… well, like it was a bullet…"

Maybe I could go to the toilets. No, they'd have smoke detectors in there, dammit. Considering how heavily one of my aunts was invested in that industry and the profits it bought into the family, it was downright hypocritical of them to hold this gathering in a building which banned smoking. Wouldn't you agree?

Of course, my family is full of hypocrites. All families are.

"… and both of us were covered in blood, but we were the only two left alive on the entire battlefield, so then we went down to the waterside and…"

"Oh, how very romantic," I said vapidly, clasping my hands together. "You have done well with this one, Tele! But," I coughed, "perhaps you should keep things a little more… well, suitable… in front of," I jerked my head in the direction of the third youngest of my sisters, sitting two seats down from me, who was listening avidly to it.

Andra, who's just seventeen and still pre-Maiden pouted. "You're no fun," she accused.

"Of course I'm not," I said high-mindedly. "It's not suitable for you. I don't want your mind being tainted by Televa's tales."

"I'm old enough to know what she gets up to!"

I shared a smirk with Televa. "No, you just know what I say I get up to," she said. "For all you know, I'm just an accountant who dresses up my stories of paperwork to impress you, and Kalvin is just my secretary. My handsome, dashing secretary who looks wonderful shirtless, which is why I hired him."

Andra's mouth dropped open. "That's not true," she protested, eyes widening. "I saw the videos of you at that planet-thing! You're a big cool commando! You have to be!"

"Hey, when grandma tells us to do a hostile takeover, it's pretty hostile," Televa said, trying to keep a straight face. "I just do the paperwork really."

"You're sweet and young and innocent," I said, "and so it's our job as your older sisters to keep you safe. From everything and anything. Even things you think you want to know."

I mean it, too. Whatever disagreements I might have with my mother and especially my grandmother, I _never_ let them get close to my sisters. Even the ones who like Andra are a lot younger than me and who I don't see often, I try my very best to take care of. More than Grandmother does, certainly.

She crossed her arms over her still-flat chest. "You're mean!" she accused. "Stop treating me like a baby! Just because the two of you are like… well over a hundred!"

"I let you spend three weeks with me on Illium the year before last, during your school holidays, didn't I?" I said. "And one ten does not make up a shedding tree."

Yes, if you're reading a translated version, I bet the autotranslate didn't manage to catch the pun there. It frequently fails at that. Pretty much all the time, actually. Whatever survives its passage through the VI is only a fraction of what was originally there, even if you have a good heuristic model which can pick up on common idioms. If you're reading this in some barbaric language which can't manage proper subtlety and sophistication, suffice to say that I'm even wittier if you read the original version. Whatever the software is translating 'ten' as, it probably doesn't keep the fact that it sounds like 'red leaf', and likewise 'shedding tree' should sound like 'passing time'.

Look, it was funny, okay, and I thought it up all on the spot myself. Televa smiled, and some of my other sisters seated around us chuckled.

And I know for a fact that Televa's mayfly boyfriend was using an autotranslate for that, because he said "Is that some kind of asari saying? It doesn't really make sense." I bit down on a retort, because for all that I might disapprove of Televa's choices, I was not about to embarrass her or distress Andra here, much as verbally tearing into him would have been enjoyable.

By the Goddess, I really needed a smoke.

But before I could do anything other people would regret, the soft chiming noise of my grandmother hitting the crystal gong before her echoed through the room, and like obedient little veshka we all turned to listen to our dear beloved matriarch, seated up at the head table with her Mother-daughters.

"Friends!" she said softly, her voice amplified throughout the hall. "Dear friends. Family, beloved family. It is wonderful to see all of you here today. Each and every one of you has a special place in my heart, and your presence only makes me fonder of each and every one of you. I am deeply, deeply thankful that all my dear ones are here, especially to celebrate the birth of my first great-grandchild!"

There was polite applause, and my heart ran cold. Because she had just lied to our faces. If she really loved us, she wouldn't send my sisters and my cousins and my aunts out to die for her for some marginal political or economic advantage. If she loved us, Liara and Nama wouldn't have been cut to pieces by krogan criminals after she sent them to deal with them in bad faith, and my two closest younger sisters would still be alive. She doesn't know that I know what she did just to get her hands on e-zero rights for that planet, and I'm not going to let her know.

If she loved us, she wouldn't lie about this being her first great-grandchild. She wouldn't refuse to accept that one of my oldest aunts got away from her, like my mother never did, and one of _her_ daughters ended up among the poor, fast-breeding parts of asari society who start having babies far too young for traditional matriarchs (small 'm') like her. They erode the classical parts of our biology and take drugs to become Mothers and start breeding, and we can't have that, can we? No, we can't. That's why I know relatives on Illium who I can never acknowledge, and why I certainly don't let my mother find out that I help them out, because I, _unlike others_ , understand what family means.

And if she loved us, Kamara – sweet, innocent, Kamara, who never meant to hurt anyone and who handed herself in after it happened - wouldn't have spent nearly a hundred and fifty years at a monastery, confined and imprisoned because of something which wasn't her fault. She wouldn't have had her name erased from the family records and I wouldn't have to pretend to be doing other things on the rare occasions I get to see my older-closest sister. She said just the same thing when I was little, but it didn't stop her getting rid of the sister who half-raised me. And of course, there are people who are more liberal about that, but my mother was too spineless to stand up to her mother and went and signed custodial rights right over.

No, as I see it, the chains of obligation and loyalty are all one way with my darling, caring grandmother.

But naturally I sat there with a dutifully blank face, smiled at all the right points of her self-justifying, blathering speech, and applauded. Then my older aunts stared giving speeches thanking her, and then it was my mother's turn, and then my younger aunts started, and I sat there and applauded and smiled like a perfect little doll. Toasts, cheers and congratulations, oh my.

Once that festival of barely tolerable hypocrisy was over, the meal began in earnest, and I got to watch up close Tele's mayfly ruin a perfectly good steak by cooking it until it hardly had any blue bits left in it. And then he bought out a small packet from somewhere his clothes, and put some kind of acidic-smelling red sauce on it, completely smothering the flavour. Nevertheless, I was able to keep up my civility to him, although that was helped a lot by managing to sneak off for a quick smoke under disguise of a toilet break.

After the meal came the mingling and socialising. As per my mother's orders, I lied to the face of people who asked me what I was currently doing, and did so by telling the truth. "Oh, I work as a private investigator on Illium," I would say, "looking into all kinds of things." Or perhaps, "I'm based in Nos Astra, and I… find things. Often things people don't want me to." Sometimes, when I got bored, I would be as elaborate as saying, "I'm just a private investigator. Nothing more, despite Aunt Aetherina's best efforts. Really, don't listen to the rumours."

And so because of that, I would estimate that at least a third of people unrelated to me at that party thought I was part of some commando spy network on Illium, looking into that upstart who's making a fuss there, or some other bit of family business. And my mother was pleased because that kind of subtle fear and acknowledgement of the reach of the family would please my grandmother. And it did, because she deigned to thank me personally in the traditional farewells, and noted in person that she'd transferred fifty-thousand credits into one of my accounts 'as a gift'.

Of course she wanted to buy me, to have the implication become the truth. Yes, she would just love for me to take up tutelage under Aetherina, who's tangled deep in the commando-industrial complex and no doubt wants more responsible Maidens to handle running wetwork and information gathering operations. Well, screw that. I wasn't going to be bought out by her then, and knowing what I know now, I'm sure as hell not going to give in now.

But naturally I said nothing, smiled, thanked and was respectful, and said I looked forwards to that in a few decades time, when I had learned more and got a bit of wanderlust out of my system. Just what she would want me to say. All in all, I was rather glad to be on the shuttle back up to the transport which would be taking me back to Illium. At least the worst thing that could happen to me there was the engines failing and falling to the ground and exploding. There's something honest and simple about flaming death.

As I looked down at the receding surface of the planet and emptied my glass of neat hasni, I was fairly sure that was the worst thing all year out of the way.

Goddess, I was such a fool.


	3. Chapter 3

I'm now going to pause for a moment, while I talk about halkemari. I suppose they're a bit of a specialist pet, but I've seen them in shops on the Citadel. If you want the raw details, you can go and look them up on the net, so instead I'll just talk about them for a bit because they're my favourite pets and if you skip ahead, I'll just think less of you. Well, I'd think less of you if I knew who you were and that you even existed.

Anyway, halkemari are native to some world in the Serpent Nebula; some high-g place orbiting a gas giant. They live all around coastal regions; they're not aquatic, but they're certainly a bit soggy, especially with the tides that kind of place has. They have pentalateral symmetry, compared to the bilateral symmetry we have – ten limbs, arranged in two clusters of five. They don't strictly have a digestive system as we know it; each of their limbs has a proboscis-like attachment which can inject a cocktail of enzymes, and then they slurp it up, carrying the enzyme stew around in their blood.

But that's the boring bit. See, halkemari don't have a central 'brain', not even in the sense that hanar do. In place of a skull, their entire skeleton exists to protect the neural tissue they have inside it. The closest parallel to an asari brain they have are just the areas where the endoskeleton becomes exoskeletal and so the 'marrow' has much more volume, but those are only sections of high neural density. And given that shape, and the way their nervous system is set up, and their 'brain' surface-area-to-volume-ratio, they have an incredible number of neurons for their body size. It's something like two orders of magnitude above ours – though it isn't quite a fair comparison, because there's so much neural tissue in them that some of it has been repurposed for other functions, like how some – get this – some of their axon-equivalents have been repurposed for an immune system, literally electrocuting infected areas to kill-and-sterilise them.

Yeah. They literally electrocute their own brain to fight disease. I'm fairly sure if they were smarter, they probably wouldn't think of themselves as one person; how can you do that when your thinking-stuff can lose large amounts of its mass when fighting off an infection, and then it just regrows. What kind of continuity of consciousness could you have if you could lose vast amounts of your brain and it just… grows back?

Now, of course, there's a reason we centralised – mostly – the thinky bit in one place. Halkemari are perhaps varren-smart, perhaps a little better at puzzle solving – it's a bit hard to tell, because of how alien their senses and systems are. But I managed to train one of my longer-surviving ones to open a lunch box which I'd sealed and put a rubber band around, so they've certainly got some learning kudos. Of course, it died pretty soon afterwards, so I couldn't see how long it remembered that trick.

Some people might say it's a shame how my ones tend to die quite a lot. But they are meant to be quite a hard pet to take care of. I tried seeing if I could breed my own, and exposed them to e-zero when I did it. The stillborn larvae were cancer-riddled messes. But I'll bet you anything biotic research labs are doing things with halkemari. And I'd win the bet.

Oh yeah, I say 'mostly' when talking about the centralised nature of the asari brain – oh, and the turian brain and the salarian brain and the brain of the other lesser species – because… well, it's not quite true. For one, certain reflexes originate outside the 'true' brain. And for two, the e-zero nodules in your biology? Yeah, the nerve cells around them show somewhat "brain-like" alterations. No, it's not a mutation, not in the sense of a genetic change; it's a phenotypical change in development. The body of the e-zero exposed foetus "realises" that its cells should develop with the kinds of cells around the nodules normally only seen in brains, and that's how the nervous system manages to use the e-zero. Tiny pseudo-brains enmesh the lumps; that's how it was explained to me, although I don't think they're _literally_ brains. Though studies have shown that, sometimes, instinctual use of biotic powers get the nodule firing _before_ the main brain has finished doing the characteristic pattern.

So, just so you know? If you've ever lashed out in self-defence and thrown someone across the room? Did you really choose to do it, or did the tiny brains around the e-zero lumps in your body make the choice first and tell the rest of your brain to agree to their decision?

Why am I even talking about halkemari? Why, it's obvious. I bought myself some as a way of spoiling myself when I got back, to reward myself for being a good girl and not flipping out and slaughtering people – or whatever stereotypical behaviour you think an asari should do when they become a clichéd 'woman on the edge' stressed out beyond belief – while at that damn family gathering.

I like my pets.

They don't demand anything of me, apart from food, and they have velvet-soft flesh and sleek exoskeletal bits, so feel nice to pet. And they have pretty colours. And when I'm bored in the office, I can throw them scraps of food.

It would be nice if all my grandmother demanded of me was food, the occasional petting, and maybe a simple puzzle like trying to get a fish out of a rubber-band sealed box. But I know how my grandmother would solve that puzzle; she'd send one of her daughters to do it. Or possibly try to blackmail the rubber band into changing sides and so leaving the lunchbox to its fate.

Oh yes. I should probably confess the other reason I bought some more halkemari. See, I do keep some in my office anyway, but I'd been away for almost two weeks, and that meant that Tatrye had probably let them starve to death. She hates them; says they're creepy, that I spend too much money on them when they always die, and she hates the pathetic noises them make when she smokes in my office.

Tatrye, you see, is my partner.

… no, not in that sense. She's useful, smokes the same brand as me so we can get a bulk-buying discount, and I have a cast-iron rule to never get involved in _that_ way with people who are useful. Sex just complicates things when you're trying to keep a working business relationship with people; only brain-fuck someone you don't mind never seeing again, that's my rule. When you've seen all the lover's feuds and tiffs I have, you want to stay well clear of it. And trust me, you think I'm cynical? The stuff I see on the job means I frankly don't think I'm cynical enough about 'love' and 'sex', at least.

Yeah, I know, shocking, right? An asari who isn't a cheap blue space whore who uses sex as a tool of business to get her own way? Unthinkable! Well, go fuck yourself, you bigot, because you're not getting any from me. Even as a 'sweetener' to a deal. Porn companies have _so much_ to pay for. As do those asari who live up to that stupid cliché.

Idiots.

And just as I got out of the pet shop, carry-case filled with trilling creatures while dragging my suitcase – and thus lacking free hands – Tatyre decided to call me. After some shifting, I managed to answer my omni, and...

"Where the bloody hell are you?" was the first thing she said to me. "Get your blue arse over here, because I've been trying to call you for two hours now and we have a client coming in an hour and you're already late back from your jaunt."

So wonderfully sympathetic, I might note. "Just waiting for a shuttle," I lied.

"Stop being a tight-fisted bitch and pay for an airtaxi; you can afford it," she snapped.

"See you," I said, hanging up. Yes, our relationship was built mostly on mutual antagonism, smoking, and her swearing at me. She'd still lasted longer than any of my other partners, although honesty did dictate that I point out that the main reason for that was her tendency to carry a submachine gun wherever she went and use it on anyone who tried to kill us. And then usually load it with nasty things that even I wouldn't use, which would get her done for possession in most of c-space – though not, of course, on Ilium.

Plus, she's pretty good with tech, all in all, and that's at least half a PI's job.

I did briefly consider heading home to shower and drop off my bags, but she seemed sufficiently irate that I probably shouldn't push it. So instead I wheeled my suitcase all the way up to our shared offices, letting myself in. Naturally, the smoke hit me in the face like a hammer, and I inhaled.

"You know, you could have turned the air conditioning on," I said mildly, enjoying the fact that spending any time around Tatyre is much like lighting up yourself.

She glared a four-eyed glare at me, and breathed out a ring of blue smoke, adding to the haze that hung heavy in the air. "You're late," she said, sitting there in her customary black. The orange light of her omni lit her face from below; she had a precision tool in hand. "Oh... for fuck's sake. Really? More of those damn creatures? Really? Really?"

"And you're in a good mood," I said, wheeling my case along while trying to manoeuvre through the doorway. "Did you water my plants?"

"Yes, and I fed your bloody things," she snapped. "So don't get on my back about that."

I shrugged, and opened the door to my office. Okay, yes, the plants were in better condition than I thought they would have been. In fact my main objection was some of my plants were practically drowning, which if she'd just read the _notes_ I left her, she would have easily seen that the ones with red stickers on their pots were only to be watered every four days, and only then if their soil felt dry to the touch. I mean, honestly, how hard is it to follow basic instructions?

Dumping my case in the cubbyhole, I turned to face my free-standing halkemari tank. Now, someone less used to keeping them would have just put the new ones in, and they'd have got to watch them get torn apart. Well, actually, halkemari don't so much tear as inject enzymes which dissolve the thing from the inside out – it really is quite a thing to watch – but you get what I mean. So instead I put the new ones in the holding tank, which would let them get used to the smell and the fact that there's enough food to go around, and went to see how many of the old ones were still alive.

I stepped out of my office, three dead halkemari in a sad stack, wrapped in a handkerchief. "I left you instructions," I said, entirely reasonably and calmly with no undue aggression.

"Don't go all black-eyed on me," Tatyre snorted. "The fuckers were alive when I went in this morning, with their creepy needle arms and squirming legs. I went and even counted them. Don't blame me because the stupid things managed to kill themselves over lunch."

Argh, were my eyes doing that? I must have been more affected by it than I though. I took a deep, calming breath, and let it out slowly. "Sorry," I said, grudgingly. "Look, I'm still space-lagged, my body thinks it's about midnight, and..."

"Then go grab a quick shower and change your clothes," Tatyre said, stubbing out one cigarette in the overflowing ashtray in front of her and lighting up a new one. "I can smell you from over here, even when one of these things is right under my nose."

I chose to take advantage of this, and so tossed the halkemari in the bin and went to grab a towel and a spare change of underthings from my suitcase. There was a stand-up shower packed into a corner of the offices, because... listen, have you ever spent time in the equatorial bits of Illium? It's just too damn hot for it to be reasonable. Yes, if you're sensible you can stay in air conditioned places a lot of the time, but in my line of work that's not always possible, and sometimes after clambering over the outside of a building setting up cameras, you stink worse than a salarian sweat-lodge.

And I know that for a fact, because I had to once go into one of those places when I was following a lawyer whose client suspected he was taking bribes to lose their case. Going in disguise as the consort of an actor I hired was humiliating in the extreme. I was never so happy to get that proof that he was trying to defraud a M'radi and give it to her. Funny thing; a salarian-shaped pancake with his DNA was found at the bottom of one of the tallest skyscrapers here.

Well, I found it pretty funny. He deserved it. Making me go to that vile, hot, humid place.

Feeling freshened up, and already far, far more mentally awake than I had been when I got off the lander, I got dressed in something nice, understated and professional, and even had time to put some make-up on. Spaceships are often really dry, and I'd forgotten to pack moisturiser, so my skin was blotchy. Clients look for that kind of thing. Despite the fact that they're hiring you to follow people around, hack their mail, and other such things, they care what you look like. And don't appreciate the dishabille look that comes from late nights.

By the time that was done, Tatyre had actually bothered to turn the filters on. Which meant that the offices were in the rare state that the smoke detectors could actually work for the purposes of preventing fire. The hot sun of Illium was creeping down the sky, streaming in through the tinted windows. The monitors and various devices stacked up on one of the desks cast long shadows across the room.

She sniffed. "You still stink," she said. "Worse now, because the smoke's gone. Why can't your entire damn species smell less like rotting fruit?"

"And you're an ugly four-eyed freak," I said casually, checking that my pistol was holstered where I could get to it easily. "And you drowned my plants."

Before any further rancour could be raised, however, a buzzer came at the door, and our VI secretary informed us that our client was here. We let her in, and took our ready places – posturing somewhat, if I was to be quite honest. Clients appreciate it. All I knew from skim-reading the prep-document Tatyre had put together was that the client was asari, around a hundred, and she'd spoken of this being a missing person's case.

The door slid open. A gorgeous asari – and I mean, I'm certainly passable, but she could have made it as a model – in a short-cut black dress sashayed into the room, her dress further slit to show off her sky-coloured skin, painted orange by the sun. Two very pale eyes flickered between me and Tatyre, from beneath untattooed brows – an affection I detest. Her entire posture and poise suggested a certain Maidenly innocence underneath a façade of seduction built for the perusal of other species.

"Hello," she said, somewhat hesitantly. "I'm sorry, I haven't done this before, but I... well, I saw your advertisement when I searched for PIs online, and... well, I can't think of what else to do. Raasi... my boyfriend... well, he's gone missing, and he left me a note saying he was leaving, but I don't believe it was him! The writing was nothing like him! But the police won't do anything – he's just a quarian, they say – and... I need him back! Can you help me?"

And that was when I met Mara for the first time.

Boy, was she trouble.


	4. Chapter 4

The hiss of the talcha machine was a familiar buzz in the background. We'd taken our client into the Nice Room, which we kept for meetings with clients, revenue agents, people trying to shake us down, and other such formal events. She seemed to find being in a place which didn't smell faintly of smoke, even with the filters on full blast, to be reassuring. Which, you know. Was kind of why we kept it , the VIs had gone and cranked the lighting levels, colour, and wall-shades to asari-optimal.

Yeah, if you haven't had to deal with lots of species, you probably wouldn't realise what a big deal it is. But put a batarian in a room made to get a turian to relax, and they're going to be finding it too bright and all the colours too hot. Make sure you don't have any elements in the room highly reflective in the near-UV if you're going to have a salarian in. Humans start getting _hilariously_ on edge if you set the walls to certain shades of red, but they also like a slight reddish hint to the light when they're talking to an asari. Makes your skin look more pink, you see. Kind of the inverse those bars that stupid Mothers go to on the Citadel to pick up human mayflies to be the parent of their child, which have strong blue lighting which makes the human's skin look like a proper colour.

Look, we all have little cognitive biases and short-circuits. And most people get creeped out by the walls being the colour of their appropriate species' blood. Even krogan, though you'd have to be pretty dumb to deliberately try to put one of them on edge. Dumb, or deliberately playing them. Which, admittedly, isn't that hard, because they're the second-most suicidal race in the galaxy.

And talking of the first-most suicidal race in the galaxy, Mara began to talk about her quarian boyfriend. Oh, sorry, "One true heart".

Blah blah blah. It took several minutes of nearly-tearful-but-never-quite-breaking down talking for it to emerge that she wasn't _precisely_ his one true love. In fact, she was the 'other woman' to his quarian wife.

Yes, I could stop editorialising, but really, she was dreadfully boring. A mix of sob-story and sappy, white-washed romance. But if you insist...

"And you see, the two of them were working for the Admiralty Board." Mara shuffled. "I probably shouldn't have said that, but it was all legal! The quarian fleet isn't allowed in Illium's space, nor their agents, but they were an independent company legally who just happened to deal with the Migrant Fleet a lot! Xani was the captain of their largest ship, and Hal handled their things here on Illium. And I met him a few months ago, and... well, he was lonely, and things just happened! He was so sensitive... and yet mysterious, under that mask. It really is attractive, you know."

Blah blah, blah blah, yet another idiot fawning over the quarian "mystique". Clearly they're too lazy to go and look at the pictures on the extranet – for goodness' sake, there are quarian porn stars. It's not like it's _hard_ to set up a sterile room if you know what you're doing. Tend to keep the masks on, because that's what those dextro-loving freaks who pay for that stuff are into.

Plus, you know. Some people tend to lose the romance when they see that their beloved's mouth is... well, you know what geth look like, right? Yeah, they kind of look like flayed quarians, in the way that that line of turian combat robots look like turian skeletons.

The light's in the maw.

She looked at me with large dark eyes. "I didn't mean to end up involved with someone's husband! I'm not that kind of person normally. But he was lonely and he was cute, with those sensitive eyes under the mask... and we never even melded! The bond was deeper than that!"

Yeah, right. Even assuming I believe that – and it might be possible; some Maidens can be rather repressed about melding... and no, I'm not repressed. I'm cynical and sick of being treated as a sex object by drooling turians or krogans who have got it into their thick skulls that an asari might be able to have little krogan womb-bursters. Goddess only knows how they can be that ignorant and still remember how to breathe. Guess that's one of the wonders of autonomous nervous systems.

What was I saying?

Ah yes, even if I believe that the relationship was meld-chaste, there are lots of other things one can do without melding, which frankly interest other species a lot more. Like wanting to stick various appendages and protrusions in your cloaca – which is _disgusting_ and _unhygienic_ , thank you very much. And she was talking to an asari, so of course she had an interest in appearing pure and naive and repressed, and playing off my cultural assumptions.

Pity for her that she was talking to me and Tatyre, wasn't it? Ever seen a batarian roll their superior eyes in weary cynicism? I have. Repeatedly. On a daily basis.

"Well, about a month ago, I was... well, _with_ him. I'd been away on a short holiday up to Nos Cthon, you see, and so I'd been missing my beloved true heart. And then... well, that's when the news came. His wife was also away – she was away a lot, because she was with the vessel, but... well, she'd died of a stroke."

Immediately suspicious. There are so many other things which can be faked as a stroke, you know. Apparently it's one of the favoured ways for the salarian STG to kill people, although frankly anything you hear about them is probably lies. Everybody lies; I lie, Tatyre lies, but few things lie like a salarian spy. Apart from my grandmother. Who is patterned off a salarian. Who may have been a spy.

She sighed. "Well, he was heart-broken, and so was I. She knew about me and him, I think, and I'd gotten to know her a fair bit. She certainly dropped a few comments, and she was very nice. All understanding about such things. She'd even put some orders in with me."

Tatyre cleared her throat. "What did you say you did?" she asked, casually.

"Oh, that! I'm an artist!" Mara said. "You might have seen some of my works, at MoCC's latest exhibition! I work in organic materials... meat, bone, bile... all ethically sourced, and none of that cheap RNArtistry – only naturally evolved substances. I feel it reaches into the very heart of what it means to be alive! The beating of a heart wired up to a canvas painted in dark shades reaches inside and strips away the lies of civility! And the restriction of the artform inspires creativity... when your palette is so limited, you have to rely on the subtle shadings and the texture."

"Fascinating," the batarian drawled. "A unique field."

"Oh, not really; I'm building off Maldran's work. He was a salarian genius operating around a hundred years ago. He basically devised the entire field from scratch, as a rejection of late tertiary neo-Harrusianism and its focus on the aesthetics of sterility and industrialism. I saw his work, and I knew I wanted to bring it to the masses."

"Amazing," Tatyre said, her fingers twitching in a way which I knew she wanted a smoke. "I am in awe at the scope of your goal."

I made a note to check out some of her work. Not only to make sure it existed, but also because it sounded mildly interesting. Certainly, something which might draw a quarian. I should probably check that she wasn't murdering people for her art, I also decided. That much enthusiasm couldn't be healthy.

Clearing my throat, I tried to manoeuvre things back to a semblance of a coherent train of conversation. "So," I said, "you said his wife died. While I am sure that it was tragic, and I am sorry for both your and his loss... do you suspect that he was badly affected enough to," I cleared my throat, "make bad decisions?"

"No!" There was surprising vehemence at that. "He wouldn't do such a thing! He wouldn't! After... after she died, we ended up even closer. I was there for him, and... and we would sleep together in the clean-room him and his wife had, and..." she dabbed at her eyes, with a handkerchief procured from a pocket, "... and he cried and I was there for him, and... and..."

She trailed off, and then started again. "He wouldn't just vanish like that, if... if he was going to end it. This is Illium. If he was going to do that, he'd... I don't want to think about it, but he had a gun, and if he suddenly... lost control, that's how he would. Or by jumping off a building. I looked up the statistics on the extranet; I'm sure of it."

Well, she was certainly right there. People who kill themselves on Illium do it the same easy way that people do it all over the galaxy – they shoot themselves. Or for the local speciality, they jump off a building and leave a socially irresponsible and selfish mess at the bottom, which delays you when you're trying to get around and they close off a street for cleaning.

So inconsiderate.

"The thing is," she continued, "the thing is? In the last week, he started to get... well, erratic. He wouldn't talk to me about some things. He was getting messages on the extranet, though... threatening ones. I snuck a peak when he stayed logged in. And some of it mentioned his relationship with me, and about how he needed to 'remember what he had to do and not get distracted'. That's not the only thing I got from him!" she added, pulling out an omnitool memory card. "I copied what was on it, but he had most of it encrypted, so I can't see things. But you might be able to."

I took the chip, and handed it to Tatyre. "Hmm, a 4Kai Fire," she said, to herself. "Nice model, but tough security if the patches are kept up to date. Especially if custom software is in use – you know how quarians can be. I'll try my best, but don't get your hopes up," she said in a bare-faced lie.

I've heard her smug remarks about quarians and their indomitable urge to tinker with any hardware or software they get their hands on more than enough to know that she was lying. Most of them apparently just end up opening up security flaws when they bolt on custom plug-ins or jailbreak their omnitool's security lock to make it easier to mod. One of the ways you know they're serious is if they're watertight.

Mara smoothed down her short black dress, the movement – coincidentally? – showing more thigh. "Three days ago, he... he rewrote his will, writing me in as the major beneficiary," she said, a hint of shake in her voice. "It was signed and properly registered here, with witnesses. Well, without his wife, his old one was out of date."

"Who lost out?" I asked.

"That... uh, I think he mentioned people back on the Fleet, but he didn't name names," she said. "And then the next day... the day before yesterday, he disappeared. No sign of him. He didn't pack. There was nothing like anyone had broken into our... his apartment. He was meant to be at one of my art showings. No calls, no nothing... the first I knew was when he didn't show up. I waited up all night, and..." she dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief, "... still no him. Normally I'd have waited longer, but... well. I can't go to the police; they'll just suspect me because the will was just changed! And he's a quarian anyway! You need to find him, or find out what happened to him!"

Tatyre and I shared a meaningful glance. A suspicious disappearance of a quarian who had shown an interest in separating from the Migrant Fleet. Oh boy. A One People scenario in the making.

"Well, that's certainly an interesting case, ma'am," I said. "Very... puzzling." Did she just want proof of his death? Especially if she was the one who did it... or tried it and failed, or... well, I paused in my morbid contemplation for a moment. I guess she actually could be innocent now, if the quarian looked like he might have been One People'd.

Hard to tell. Interesting.

The batarian shot me another glance as if she suspected strongly what I was thinking, and cleared her throat. "Well, madam, our fees start at..."

The asari with the sky-blue skin tapped her wrist, bringing up a sleek deep red omnitool, and swiped her fingers on it. "I've linked an account with a month's worth of your standard fee according to your extranet site... that should be fine, shouldn't it? It's digitally signed, and backed by Belba."

Tatyre shot a glance at me, and I nodded. "We will provisionally take the case, madam," she said crisply, "while we begin preliminary investigations. The standard rules and details of the contract can be obtained in hard form if you wish, and since your payment was signed, we will consider that a mark of agreement to all the terms and conditions contained therein."

"Fine." An immaculately nailed hand was flapped at us. "Just find him, please, I beg of you!"

We saw her out – and yes, maybe I did appreciate those long, graceful legs whose passage up was only interrupted by her short dress – and retreated to the room marked as a storage room on the building plans to talk. The clients never see this place, and honestly I would rather not spend more time in there than I have to, because Tatyre has packed it wall to wall with hardware. This isn't your regular stuff, either; we're talking military-grade heat-sinks repurposed for cooling her computers, bubbling green coolant tanks, wires all over the place, the works.

Both of us lit up with a sigh of relief.

"So," Tatyre said, breathing out bluish smoke through her nostrils so it wreathed around her face, "you think she did it?"

I sucked in a lung full of smoke, and held it as I thought. I wobbled my hand from side to side, and said, "I'd give it maybe... forty percent? She's naive. Too naive... that was a persona."

"Hey, you read asari better than I do," she said with a shrug, sinking down into her chair. "I just found her fucking annoying. You think she's faking that personality?"

I snorted. "Such a cliché. The young radical Maiden artist, who's still nevertheless naive and open eyed and believes in love. I bet if we'd asked her, she'd say that she thinks that dancing in a club is a legitimate expression of artistic physiology or some crap like that, rather than a way for the watchers to get meld-happy or get the urge to go and deposit alien fluids in you. I'd be just as cynical about the uber-lethal hardcore Maiden mercenary who's the most deadly thing on two legs despite the fact that she's only about sixty, the ever-so-dark-and-wild hedonist who's into things which are _so_ dark and radical and violence and radical dark wildness in the dark violence..." I coughed, and drew another drag. "Fuck, the only way she could be more nice-clichéd than as an artist is if she was some kind of ever-so-nice Mother's girl who never swears and who never got in fights except in self-defence and is... like, a plant biologist, or something like that."

Tatyre cocked an eye as she played with the memory unit Mara had given us. "Ow," she drawled, "you're being even more cutting that usual. She got you mad, didn't she?"

I glared at her. "I hate it when idiots like her – or at least the face she wants the world to see, which... yeah, might be real, but I'd prefer it not to be – mean that people expect me to be some blue-skinned whore who'll jump into bed with someone just because they're 'sensitive' or they 'want to get to know alien species'. And I'm not angry."

My emotions were totally under control I will have you know, by the way.

"What, sweet little her, who's a young naive idiot who's only, what, as old as my grandmother?" She snorted, smoke twirling out. "Yeah, you blueys are fucked in the head that you can be so stupid when you're older than my life expectancy."

"Are you going to decrypt that memory unit or what?" I said, mild – and no more than mild – annoyance creeping into my voice.

Tatyre squatted down by one of her many machines, searching for the right cable before plugging it in. "Yeah, yeah, I'll do my techno-magic. Hocus pocus. Alakazam. And... oh, I do not believe this shit."

"Oh?" I leant back against the wall, watching holographic lights dance in the smoke.

"Yeah." She shot me a four-eyed stare. "A good half the thing's completely unencrypted. Which means either our quarian was lazy, an idiot, a lazy idiot, she managed to snatch it at a time when all of that was totally unencrypted – that's not a realistic scenario unless he was going something _really_ odd – or she faked it. So... file-names... okay, he was running BlueBlack... okay... yeah, the calendar is in the unencrypted stuff. What a surprise."

"A set up?"

"Maybe." Tatyre shrugged again, tapping off her cigarette into one of the ashtrays which always accumulate somewhere she spends time around. "If you're going to investigate it, go armed and go ready." She waved a hand, and brought up a list. "Have fun."

I glared. "I can't read that. I can't even read the alphabet."

"Oh, if you insist," she said. She always did this, you know. She wanted me to wear those translate-y eye-camera things, and I downright refused. Because, seriously? A piece of technology, with a camera inside, which had been in her hands? I'd never have got a moment's peace.

Putting that aside, I ran my eyes down the list of places – oh, how convenient, indeed. Yes, it was indeed his calendar, and the places he'd been in the past week, and that stunk to the highest treetops. I scanned over the places within... full of acronyms, abbreviations, and pet names. "Meet QV and Pinky at Ozorne's," I read out loud. "Mara's show – be there early." My eyes widened. "Meet QV and IV at Erzala's. Well, well, well. And that one even has a location."

"I presume you've remembered you left the kettle on before you went off on your family jaunt," Tatyre said, fingers clattering against one of her input devices as she got started on the encrypted bits.

"Go fuck yourself," I retorted casually. "I think I know who that one's talking about. Erzala is... a friend."

"Don't be silly. You don't have friends," Tatyre said, without turning around. "Oh... isn't that the bar you go to pick up poor saps who love a beautiful girl with a wonderful personality? I really don't know how you get away with fooling them like that."

That's not why I went to Erzala's, incidentally, but I wouldn't tell this sort of thing to my charming companion. She's a colleague, nothing more.

"She's a contact," I said coldly, stubbing out my cigarette. And no, not on Tatyre, and no, I wasn't even tempted. Honestly. "And I got a look at those numbers involved. If she can put down a month's payment just like that, she's not exactly poorly off even before the will comes into play. And this is a business."

Tatyre yawned, stretching. "So, let me get this straight. You think we should take the case where a quarian trading corp's head has gone missing. We are being paid by his mistress, who it's a good chance is the culprit. Other suspects include his supposedly-dead wife when we only have the mistress' word for that, any number of people on Illium who don't like someone who's almost certainly a spy for the quarian Admiralty Board, the quarian Admirality Board and their One People policy, and, oh yes, anyone who might have just shot a quarian and hidden the body." She blinked, all four eyes at once. "And you think it's a good idea?"

I gave a one-shouldered shrug. "This place's rent isn't cheap," I said, "and my savings exist for a reason. Which isn't funding day to day running. And this could have... interesting pay-offs for us. If she's innocent, we have good relations with the to-be-head of a shipping company. If she's not, we have blackmail material on the to-be-head of a shipping company."

"And if we get shot in the head, we have gaping head-wounds." The batarian slumped. "I'll go prepare our dead-man's handles and hostage-data upload sites then, while I leave this running," she said, swinging on her chair. "And set up some new ones. And change all our passwords, and check all the defence systems around the office are up to specs, and then install some more."

"That would probably be a very good idea," I said.


	5. Chapter 5

So, I was off and out and about, following leads for a new case. While, I might still add, being heavily spacelagged and not having had a chance to go home yet. A PI's life is a hard one.

Mind you, I practically live out of the office at times, to the extent that I have a bed, a wardrobe, and other things which help make life liveable there. So perhaps that's a little bit dishonest. But I still hadn't properly eaten since before I got off the lander, hadn't slept, and wanted a drink.

So the first lead I chose to follow was the one which would take me to a place which could satisfy two of those three desires. But I made sure to bring my shotgun and slip body armour on under my coat. Because Erzala's bar was down low, on ground floor, and on Illium, that means only one thing.

It wasn't a nice neighbourhood.

Nos Astra isn't like Nos Cthon; it's much more equatorial, and that means that at sea level, it's just too damn hot... made worse by the way that the air conditioning of the towers dumps the waste heat down low. There are species of native ptero which have adapted to use the thermals from them – that's how much hot air gets pumped out.

It's sweltering when you're wearing a ballistic vest under your jacket, but I wasn't going to show too much skin down there, and the coat was a statement of threat in its own right. 'Back off,' it said. 'I'm someone who's wearing a hot, heavy coat down here, which means I've almost certainly got weapons and armour under here.'

It was a truthful coat.

At sea level, the neon glow of the streetlights and the sick shimmer of advertising boards is the main light you're getting; the shadows from the city around you leave the deeps in permanent twilight. Sometimes streets have to be closed off when a suicide from above makes a mess. When it rains – and Goddess, does Nos Astra have rain in the monsoon season, which just makes it humid – the water is already old by the time it gets down that far. It carries grime from shining buildings and deposits it in the depths, and has already picked up the fumes and smogs of the city above. The glowing adverts get painted black and everything gets even darker. The murder rate goes up.

I hate working cases looking into stuff that happens when it rains.

Oh, Nos Astra. It's the bits of the city the tourism boards don't want you to see. It's almost like it's an inevitable consequence of having all the pretty bits of the city on high-up skyways, which are expensive to build and limited in space, but still needing places for poor people to live. Turns out, yeah, corporations aren't too good at judging externalities when they're allowed to write laws. Who could have guessed?

But as a consequence of that, by the standards of the city above, Erzala's bar was actually pretty damn large. She had a good chunk of several floors of one of the built-up base anchors for the towers, conveniently close to one of the downlifts near a skyway for the footfall traffic. Emerging from the lift into the gloom of sea-level, I let a rowdy group of turian construction workers past, and made my way there, the harsh glow of the advertising boards painting my skin in many hues.

I had to admit, I was looking forward to seeing Erzala. I liked her, and if you ask the people who know me, I don't like many people. I help her out, she helps me out... it works out. Oh yes. And she's also my cousin. She's family. Not that I'm allowed to admit that anywhere where word might get back to the rest of the family, of course.

Her mother got away from our grandmother, and... well, once that had happened and the legal ramifications had worked their way through, she wasn't in a good place. Which meant that her daughters, like Erzala, didn't have the support network and the investments and the chain of contacts which I got, and which I tolerate my grandmother's interference in my life to keep. My family makes the amounts it costs to raise, educate and maintain each of us easily accessible, just so we feel guilty and obligated. The multiple degrees, the decades of private tutors, the allowances... it's a lot. A lot of lots. And if you can't show the family ways in which you're bettering yourself or helping its financial interests, be prepared to say goodbye to the allowances and help you get from it.

But then again, debt-slavery has always been a big thing in asari culture. It's one of the many ways we – and the volus, too – are far more sophisticated than batarians. We don't need expensive brain chips and burly thugs with spiked gauntlets to keep those we own under control. The best slaves consider themselves free, after all.

Although that doesn't stop my grandmother keeping some of those aforementioned thugs around, of course. As a sop to civilisation, they're her 'private security', and they don't use anything as crude as spiked gauntlets.

Anyway, Erzala ended up on Illium, dancing in clubs and worked her way up to a managerial position. Doesn't work in places with asari ownership, but we can outwait other species. What's twenty years when you're saving all your tips? We can do that; that's a lifetime for a vorcha, or the adult working life of a salarian. She made management, and a few years later, the owners went missing in suspicious circumstances.

Probably linked to their ties to certain elements of organised crime on Illium. A remarkable number of people who owe money to the Sur'tah Al'mesh – as this lot did – who think that they might not be able to pay their debts go missing. Sometimes they just skip planet. Often they end up 'jumping off a building' or being used as foundation material for a new tower.

That all happened just before I met her properly for the first time, so I'm only getting her tale of what happened before she took over the place second hand. I wasn't in the PI business at that point; I just had heard rumours that one of my aunts wasn't to be spoken of around the family, so naturally went looking for them when I was off seeing the galaxy. Maliala was dead – car accident – and I followed the chain of connections, looking for her daughters. Erzala was the first one I found – that I was able to find.

It's funny to think that that's really what led me to discover just how deep my skills in this kind of investigative field went, and led to me settling down on Illium to make a business out of this. I did it all as part of my post-quaternary education jaunt. I went off to the Terminus, which was where I was sure things would be far more interesting than going to see 'the glories of Thessia' or some tedious thing like that; I'd already seen them, for one. I picked up a few good little tricks there, met strange new people, some of them attempted to kill me... you know, pretty normal for a too-clever-for-her-own-good Maiden who took a position on a mapping ship because it meant she got her trip around the Terminus paid for.

Got kidnapped by pirates once. Don't think they'd ever spent much time around an asari before, and didn't know we're all biotics. Or that at that time I was carrying a compact omnitool loaded with incendiaries. Then there weren't any pirates left, and I handed in some headless bodies for their bounties to the local power; one of the smaller batarian nations.

Good times.

And this was probably where I had to confess I had told a minor untruth to Tatyre. Well, okay, more than a minor one. I wasn't going straight to Erzala's, even though I wanted to, and I wouldn't have come quite so armed if I was simply going that way. But, hey. Not only am I the one paying her wages, but I'm also the one who handles the wetworks while she does the clinical tech-stuff.

And she doesn't need to know about all the people I know. If she suspects, she'll be sensible enough to keep it quiet.

Which meant I was heading past No Sun Rise and another quarter of an hour's walk through the decidedly seedy elements of the lower city. Technically I could have gone to my cousin's place first, but I'd want a drink while I was there, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's to separate my indulgences from business. Oh, certainly, there's a time and a place to indulge, but not when the consequences of your actions might come back to bite you in the breasts.

With that thought I lit up, and inhaled. Savoured it. And then stubbed it out on the pavement, pulling out a filter-mask and pair of goggles from my pocket and putting it on. I stepped into the turian bar, ignoring the drinks menu. If I was going to drink here, and I wasn't, the only safe things would have been the water and the unflavoured spirits. An almost naked turian was doing something with a pole in a corner – yeah, I know, shocking; a bar where it isn't an asari whoring it up – and shirtless turians all in the same blue-and-red face markings were doing various macho things. Clouds of grey smoke lay heavy in the air, almost as heavy as it would have been if Tatyre had been in a room for an hour or two.

The stuff turians smoke is nasty shit, I make no two ways about it. It tastes all metally, and it's chirally wrong, so if you breathe too much of it in you're going to be feeling off for the next few hours and might end up throwing up. And it makes my eyes sting like hell; hence the goggles. Sometimes I wonder if they use it as a second line of defence against the cops, because you're basically telling any police that they're going to have to be going in there in full helmets if they want to talk to someone... which means they can't just do it casually.

I was going to have to wash my clothes after this, which is a pain, because coats like this take ages to dry.

"Hey!" An inebriated turian – female, scarred – shoved me. "What're you doin' here, bluey?" She smirked. "Want a _garina_?"

I would like to say right here and now that I did not contemplate painfully killing her. I think that is clearly a sign of my self control. "I'm not here to drink," I said through the paper mask, making sure to keep my hands in clear sight. "I just need to talk to someone, and then I'll be gone."

"Oh, really?" asked a male one. That's one thing you can say about turians; at least their faces make the genders easy to tell apart. "So you already got a date?"

Urgh. Aliens. "Premen," I called out to the bartender – my luck was in, it was one I recognised – stepping around the drunken pair. "Heya."

Her eyes narrowed, but she flapped a hand at the louts, and they grudgingly got out the way. "What do you want?" she asked, bluntly.

Do I produce that response from everyone? Honestly, people could stand to be a little more polite. Stepping closer, I dropped my voice. "Can't I come to talk?" I asked, pushing a credit chip wrapped in a piece of paper across the table.

"No, not really," the turian said. Her eyes scanned the note, and widened slightly. "I'll see if he's in," she said, ducking back into a backroom.

I wasn't about to lean back against the bar and grin offensively widely, because I rather wanted to get out of this place alive. And if I smirked a little, well; that was covered by the mask over my lower face. I certainly kept on my toes and alert, though, because... man, I'd get in _so_ much trouble even if I _did_ manage to survive being mobbed by twenty armed turians. And that bitch left me in there for a good ten minutes.

Turian bars where you are decidedly not welcome are like... the fourth worst kind of bar to be in. In normal circumstances, of course. A little voice in my head was screaming at me for not going to my cousin's place first, but my general common sense was reminding me to get this over and done with quickly. And eventually the bartender came back, and let me into the backrooms.

The turians lazing around in here were decidedly not topless, but were in fact wearing bulky coats which were clearly covering armour. The bastards deal with heat better than us, so they weren't sweating or anything – and yes, turians do sweat, although only from certain bits. Now was an even worse time to make stupid moves, because they were armed and dangerous.

Goddess, I hate dealing with turian criminal organisations like this; when pretty much all of them have gone through military training, it makes them far more dangerous than some idiot batarian who picks the flashiest gun he can find and tries holding it sideways. And it means that they're organised, and have discipline; albeit not as much as a proper military. Except among the really dangerous sorts.

But it was the same cooperation and connections and contacts which made them useful, and why I was going to them right now. Specifically, I was going to one turian.

Garteus Petrach. A brute of a turian; taller than usual, and built like an anorexic krogan – or, to put it in a more precise scale, a concrete wall.

And here he was, sitting behind a desk stacked high with datapads. That's what these gangs use; they load it onto an encrypted pad and have a runner carry it so it never even passes through the extranet. He put down his current work when he saw me, and exhaled, a deep rumble. "So you've come to visit, have you?"

"Purely professional," I said, trying not to breathe too heavily. I was regretting only taking a paper mask for this; it was already black with smoke, choking the filters. "I'm not asking for or giving favours; I'm just looking to pay if you know what I want."

He gave a shrug, muscles rippling under his deep blue suit. "That's a fair deal," he said. "Wouldn't you say that to be the case, Prima?" he asked a female with her face painted in a white-and-dark-blue style which looked disturbing like an asari skull bleeding from the sockets.

Which I bet was deliberate.

Bitch.

"I would say so," the female said, grinning at me. She had two pistols, knives, and a shotgun on her, and not much else. Yeah, yeah, I know, turian females don't have to worry about inconvenient bouncing, but there's still such thing as standards and 'wearing more than belts to carry weapons on'.

So, anyway, there was some more clownish counterpoint of ganglord and loyal henchwoman as I carefully explained a sanitised version of my current case to Petrach – missing quarian, he's been seen frequenting places down here, willing to pay standard rates for any leads on his location, private client with no links to law enforcement – and the longer they kept it up, the more I began to suspect that firstly, they knew more than they were letting on. Well, that much was obvious, of course, but more than they were letting on about this specific case.

And secondly, that there was something going on between them. Who knows, maybe she actually does wear armour normally, and the reason she was so scantily clad and that it took no small amount of time for me to actually get in to see the crimelord was that he had to get a little less... ahem... no-clouds-summer, if you know what I mean, while his pet killer just put her guns on.

If you don't, it's probably the translator's fault for messing up some perfectly innocent innuendo. If she'd been an asari, I could have said that she had to put her guns away, which would have at least been understood by species where the female nurses, but... well, turian. They're rather more the 'vomit down the infant's throat' sort.

"I'll keep an eye out," he rumbled, eventually. "You'll hear from me if I do hear anything."

"Thank you so very much," I said, eager to leave.

"And who knows," he added, "you might be able to do a little favour for me."

Urgh. I got it already. You already know something, but you want something from me. "I'll take things into consideration," I said.

"If you hear anything about what the Sur'tah Al'mesh are up to, I'll take it as a personal favour," he said, trying to sound casual.

It wasn't casual. Not at all. A personal favour, and asking for information on the activities of the salarian mob? No, no, not casual at all. He wouldn't have specified them by name, or said it was personal if he was merely being cautious; something has him worried.

Well, well, well. I wonder what happened here while I was away. I was only gone for two weeks; hardly anything. And I didn't hear rumblings of anything before... mind you, the previous cases had all been infidelity ones, which hadn't seen me going down here as much, but... still. This was unusual, in its own right.

With this hanging on my mind, I said my farewells, and made my way back out through the smokey bar. Once out into the fresh air – relatively speaking – of Illium, I tore my smoke-encrusted filter mask off and stuffed it away, and took off my goggles, breathing the polluted air with relief.

I pulled out a cigarette, but didn't light it, merely chewing on the end as I sauntered along, thinking. Hmm. I needed to get up to speed with things. And I also needed to eat, sleep, and have a drink. Yes. I had considered delaying Erzala's until the morning after putting up with that turian bar, but I could get three of the four things there.

So with that on my mind, I sauntered along the streets of sea-level Illium, light washing over my face as air-cars roared in the sky above.


	6. Chapter 6

Thumbs hooked into my pockets, I casually strolled past the bouncers at No Sun Rise. They knew me. They knew I was family of the owner and was on the 'always admit' list. Even if, as in this case, I was strolling through obviously armed and smelling of turian cigarettes.

I hoped I'd be able to hang my coat up under an air conditioner or something, so it could go back to its normal 'smelling of asari cigarettes' state.

No Sun Rise is fiercely egalitarian in its clientèle, all in the name of making money. That's probably the reason that the quarian I was investigating had gone to meet someone there... well, that and the fact that it's pretty close to a down-lift and has private rooms. But that means that its main interior decoration was carefully designed to be neutral. Nothing that pisses any of the major species off too much. Lights were a little dimmer than I would have preferred, but that's pretty much true of any club. Bit lacking in the UV and near UV, too, because batarians and humans complain about light just at the edge of their respective vision ranges.

Oh well. I could live with it. Which is not surprising considering that, you know, it's asari-owned.

Compared to the turian bar I had just been in, this was a considerably more pleasant place. And I'm not just saying it because Erzala's family. Or because this place wasn't mostly filled with turians with links to the mob. Why, I would say that barely twenty percent of the people here had links to organised crime! That's rather lower than the upper class corporate tea parlours in the penthouses above. But you know what they say; owning a slum isn't a crime, but living in one is.

Well, you know, they don't actually say that, and that's actually a badly translated salarian phrase which I like using because it annoys salarians to hear an asari mutilate one of the famous phrases of some esteemed philosopher, but I say it, and it sums up my feelings pretty well. Nos Astra is how galactic society works and has always work; the rich on top getting all the light and pumping out their waste heat on those below. The maidens go out and make the killings to feed their mother.

Yeah, I know, other species who don't get how our society works would say I'm a hypocrite to condemn it, because I'm 'asari aristocracy' and that my family profits from their links to organised crime and that's where some of my allowance comes from. So by that logic I profit from organised crime too. But you know, I don't really give a shit what a bunch of aliens who don't understand why we're a 'Federation' as opposed to a 'Hierarchy' or 'Alliance' think, let alone the nuances.

So anyway, I made my way through the narrow entrance corridor, eying up the crowd. Looked like a pretty normal bunch for this time of day; late afternoon workers having a drink after getting off-shift, businessmen in their suits... nothing which put me on edge immediately. I stepped around a krogan in a suit which made him look like a wall of black fabric, and kept my eye on a gaggle of young Maidens. They looked like merc material; a bunch of young idiots high on hormones and the heady taste of freedom who go out and get themselves killed before they hit forty. Speaking as a one-sixty year old, I'd prefer they go self-destruct somewhere away from me. The fact that their table was filled with empty shot glasses was enough to keep me well clear.

No, I was never that bad. I'd already lost older sisters and cousins by the time I hit Maidenhood. And Kamara had told me – and Liara and Nama, but they hadn't listened – about how dangerous life could be. She'd always been very protective of us. Of me. And then she ended up in a monastery and then they got themselves killed. More than enough – if I didn't already have good cause – to beat the extremes of risk taking out of me before I was forty.

So – in passing noting that I'd seen them armed to one of the security guards, who thanked me and mentioned that they were already keeping an eye on them – I started looking for Erzala. Such a path would happen to lead me by the bar, so I could get a drink to wash out the taste of turian smoke from my mouth. Actually, I was already wanting another cigarette myself, but I try not to smoke around Erzala. It worries her how much I smoke, and I try not to do it in front of her.

There was a live band playing. I don't care to remember the name, because frankly they weren't very good and I don't want to give them free publicity. I detest the synth-synch which is all the craze these days, and they were all about the elongated whining vocals. And why can no one dance properly around here? Some idiot of a Maiden even asked me to dance with her when I was trying to get around the dancefloor to get a drink, but I glared at her until she went away.

People can be so anti-social sometimes.

And behind the counter was her vorcha bartender, Beya III. The number was because it was a family trade, because when you have the life expectancy of one of those things and you're working for an asari, you're not really getting much more than a single decade out of them. The vorcha's hands were a blur as she took orders and handed the finished drinks back to customers.

Oh yes. There's one thing which you can say about vorcha. Well, actually there's more than one thing, but there's one thing that I'm thinking of right now when I say that there's one thing that you can say about vorcha, and it is this; at least they have a half-way sensible reproductive system, unlike the vast majority of species in the galaxy. Even if they have to do the disgusting things with the transferral of bodily fluids, at least they're all functional hermaphrodites. Each vorcha can either sire or bear children, and that means that I can talk about them with the same gender pronouns that I use for other asari, which... sadly, your autotranslator, depending on whether it's smart enough to realise that I'm talking about vorcha, will probably translate as the feminine, unless you have a patch designed to handle vorcha and a systems VI smart enough to realise that I'm not talking about asari. Or you speak a proper language.

So, you know. Even though you're probably getting 'her' and 'she' and other female terms when I talk about them, there's no male and no female. There's just 'vorcha'.

Well, vorcha being vorcha, naturally one who uses the male bits more gets better with the whole 'transferral of bodily fluids' thing, while one who bears more children gets better at it. And then drops dead at eighteen or so from their organs giving out. When I was eighteen, I hadn't even hit Maidenhood yet, and a breeding vorcha is dead having had as many as ten litters. Interesting thing; by default, vorcha only have one offspring per mating, until they've had a few and then they start having increasingly large litters. Idiots dismiss them as pests; they scare me, just a bit. I bet the salarians are looking for a way to neuter them, and I bet a krogan's useless balls it'd be a lot harder to genophage them.

"Beya," I said, flatly.

Without missing a beat, she turned to face me, nostrils flaring. It really was something to watch; the shift in focus while still pouring drinks for others. "Ah," she exhaled. "It is you. You will be wanting Erzala to know that you are here, yes?"

"Yes. But first," I pursed my lips, "a glass of fina. Red, no ice. Put it to my tab."

"I will be with you in just a moment. Someone else is being served by me," Beya said. You know, I'm pretty sure scientists have proven that there's no way to make a vorcha look not somewhat feral and about to tear your heart out, but once you get to know them, they're marginally less bad. I bet we wouldn't be so trusting of humans and foolishly assume they think like us if they looked like vorcha. She lowered her voice. "You have been in turian bar, eh?" she added conspiratorially.

"Yes, yes," I sighed, taking a seat at the bar. "Throw in some maldamie nuts too, would you?"

Once I'd got a drink and a packet of salted nuts in me, it did at least become somewhat clearer that I was suffering from low blood sugar as well as jetlag. I certainly felt better after that. Somewhat less tetchy.

Yes, I get tetchy. What of it?

But after the first drink, and half of a second I was feeling somewhat more mellow. Even the attempts by drunken idiots to flirt with me or get me to dance were being rejected somewhat less chillily. There was a moment which was slightly touch and go when a gaggle of the mercenary Maidens who seemed to have got it into their inebriated heads that just because I was wearing mostly black and was armed and armoured I was like them tried to strike up a conversation with them. I'd like to say that what I heard confirmed all the suspicions I had of them incidentally. Sadly, asari below the age of forty or so, but who have entered Maidenhood are frequently pretty dumb. Krogan-dumb.

Not quarian-dumb, but then again, that would require active effort as opposed to just hormones.

I was saved by a miraculous figure in a nicely cut tunic-and-trousers combination sweeping me up in a hug. "You should have phoned ahead to say that you were back on Illium, sweetie!" Erzala pronounced. "How was the family gathered? You complained a lot about it beforehand!"

Firmly I hugged her back. "It was a chore," I said, "but at least it's out of the way... and please," I let go, "I've just come from a turian bar and smell. I don't want to ruin your clothes."

"Oh, it's been a long day, but that's good thinking," she admitted. "I'm sorry to have to take her away from you," she told the little idiots, "but I need to talk to her. Beya, treat them to their choice from the basic snack menu on the house. And sweetie, come with me, up to the backrooms."

There were cheers from the Maidens as we picked our way through the dance floor. "That was rather generous," I said after a while.

Erzala fluttered her eyes at me. "Oh, they've been spending enough here that a snack each isn't costing me much," she said, with a smile, "and by getting some food in their stomachs, they'll stay sober longer. And spend more. And not break the furniture."

I smiled back as we climbed the stairs and went through the security door, into rather more asari-suitable environs. "Fitting," I observed, unfastening my coat and taking it off. She took it out of my hands and folded it properly, hanging it up properly.

She's observed several times that it's very hard to guess that I had a large number of expensive personal tutors, including one for etiquette, while she was raised in a poor area on Unam.

Certainly, Erzala wrinkled her nose at the sight of the body armour underneath and the shotgun and pistol. "I do wish you wouldn't come so heavily armed," she said, sadly.

"It wasn't for you," I said. "It's why I was in the turian place. I'm not going to poke my nose into a place the turian mob frequents without protection."

"You could at least not poke your nose into such places," she responded, getting started on the straps of the breastplate. "Poor you! You must be baking in that!"

"A bit," I confessed, brushing her hands away to see to it myself. I put it down beside the comfortable chair I sunk into, leaving myself only in a sweat-stained undershirt and my trousers. "If I fall asleep," I warned her, "it's not because you're boring me. I only got off the shuttle today, only napped on the journey here, and my body thinks it's about... some time in the early morning." Slumping back, I heard the cling of glasses as Erzala poured me and herself a glass of something sweet-smelling.

"Be careful with this," she said, putting it in front of me, "it's fairly strong, and you've already had a glass and a half." She folded her legs elegantly as she sat opposite to me, staring at me. I stared back Erzala was barely older than me; she's maybe a hundred and seventy or so. If your vision is all limited at the blue end of the spectrum – like how quarians, humans and volus have it, which is why they think we only have... like, two skin tones – then you wouldn't see that from the way her skin colour's shifted, if I didn't know I'd have pinned her at almost two seventy. Harder living than me – and yes, I know I drink and smoke too much, which says everything about what she's been through – as well as the drugs and treatments which put her into Motherhood in her one fifties.

"So," she said, breaking the silence, "how was the thing?"

"Dull. Grandmother was a hypocritical patronising bitch who spent her time cheering the birth of her 'first great-grandchild'. The clothes were uncomfortable and one of those damn anthroform styles which mean you can't run properly in them." I sighed. "All in all, a fairly normal family reunion."

Ice clinked in her glass as she swirled it. "I see how dreadful it might be," she said. "Why, I would hate for my grandmother to acknowledge that I exist and pay for expensive off-world trips and dresses and the like. How dreadful it would be for her to have held that kind of big gathering just because my daughter was born."

Yes, Erzala is bitter about this kind of thing. Goddess only knows she has right to be; she's been cheated out of her position in the family because of the acts of her mother. As I may have previously intimated, I do not hold my grandmother's sense of reciprocal family agreement in high regard.

"So anyway," she said more cheerfully, "you do have no sense of fashion, sweetie. Come on, tell me about the styles people were wearing! Do you have pictures?"

I did, in fact, have pictures, because Erzala has a bemusing love of the kind of high fashion I get forced to wear at those kind of things. It is a personality flaw in her otherwise lovely self. So I had to show her some of the things I'd seen, and talk about the cut of my dress and the like. And how the slit down the front left me feeling cold.

Seriously what _is_ it with those modern style of dresses and the way they have that slit from the navel to the neck? Why would you design a dress which stops you wearing a sports bra, which is the most comfortable and best-supporting option I've found? Is it some kind of delusional imitation of the psychopaths in the Justicars, or should I blame humanity and the way that historically the sex of them who more resemble us have been the inferior gender given impractical clothing?

"Anyway," I said, after I'd sat through about all of that I could stand, "Erzala, though it is lovely to catch up with you and talk about such things, I actually came here for two reasons. One of them business, one of them... well, it's more like a duty. A personal one."

She winced. "Go on," she said, cautiously.

"First." I tapped on my omnitool, and flashprinted a photo, pushing it forwards towards her. "Hal Raasi vas Manaam. CEO of Manaam, a shipping and purchasing company... probably channelling goods to the quarian Migrant Fleet. Wife named Xani, reportedly recently deceased." I paused, for effect. "Vanished a few days ago. I've got a private client trying to trace him, his girlfriend-mistress," – no point in telling her the fact that I didn't trust sweet innocent Mara anywhere near as far as I could Throw her – ", and... Erzala, he had a meeting here. He was meeting people, but I don't know who. I want to know, so I can find him and if he's still alive."

My cousin sat bolt upright, but relaxed after a few moments. "Hmm," she said, carefully, "I do... I do have client confidentiality, over who hires my backrooms. The contracts are watertight."

"Erzala," I said. "You can trust me with this. We're family. And it's not like I mean him harm or anything; quite the opposite. He's vanished in suspicious circumstances, and I'm being paid by his mistress to find him alive. The faster I can find him, the more likely that is." Okay, that wasn't technically true, but it was barely a white lie.

She sucked in a breath. "You always do this," she said, "but... I'll take a look. No promises."

"I wouldn't want you getting in trouble," I said earnestly. "And the other thing. At the end of things at the gathering, Grandmother transferred fifty thousand credits to me. I'm transferring thirty-five thousand of them to you."

Erzala turned a paler shade of blue. "I can't," she protested. "You already do enough to help out, and... and I have my pride too! I can't... you... I'm not a charity case for the rich side of the family! I'm... you..." she trailed off.

"It's a gift. From me to you. And when you're comparing sizes of pride, mine is bigger than yours," I said, smirking. "Look, by giving this to you, I'm showing myself that she doesn't own me." I paused. "Look, if it helps you, consider it a retainer for the help you give me... including the help you're about to give me. Or consider it for Primara. I mean," I shrugged nonchalantly, "look at me. Look at how I live. I'm not going manage to have kids, so I'm going to have to help with my niece. Living vicariously, you know?"

I have to say this to her every single time when I persuade her to take money. She's right; she does have her pride. But I know better here, and she knows it. It's not like I can't afford it. And she's family, and family looks after itself. If Grandmother isn't going to do her duties by that side of the family, then I'll take it on myself – and consider myself better than her for doing it!

What, no. Of course I don't do it because I know she has a thing about growing up poor compared to me.

Erzala winced, and then sighed. "Well, if it's only for Primara," she said slowly, "and the rest is payment as a business thing... you need to stop doing this! It makes me feel guilty! I'll accept it this once, but... no more!"

She said that last time too.

"Anyway," she added, smiling, "Primara isn't your niece. She's your..."

I shrugged. "Sisters' daughters, cousins' daughters; they're all nieces to me." I paused. "How is she?"

Erzala checked her watch. "She should be doing her homework right now, if she knows what's good for her," she said. "Wait, no... how? Oh, right, yes. She's doing well. It has only been a few weeks since I last saw you. Oh, but I forgot to mention, she's been kidnapped by human slavers for an elcor paedophile who... you're going tense on me. Please don't do that. It was a joke."

Honestly, why does everyone misread my facial expressions like that? Can't I show an expression of mild annoyance without people thinking that I'm going to hunt down some hypothetical kidnapper? I was actually getting annoyed at Erzala's weak attempts at humour, if you must know. That's not really a joking matter.

Not least because I've had to deal with a not-dissimilar case in real life.

Her concerned look was interrupted by her omni chiming, and she frowned. "Sorry, I have to go for a bit," she said. "I'll get a meal brought up here, and tell Primara to come down; when I have a free moment, I'll grab the logs for the dates you wanted... uh, they were?"

I repeated myself, and she shot a slightly worried smile at me. "Yes, good, good... no, stay sitting down, it's not serious, and you need a rest. You look starving. I'll send one of the staff up to see to you, please, and it's on the house; it's the least I can do."

The food when it came was good. Hot, spicy, and it came with another drink. That was my fourth... well, my third-and-a-halfth in a short period, which usefully put a close to anything else getting done until I slept. Even if Tatyre called. I'd just have to say I was drunk.

Midway through the meal, my niece came stomping in through the door, face like thunder. I took her in; she'd somehow managed to grow in the few weeks since I'd seen her. Well, that was fair enough; she was in her mid-teens... just a bit younger than Andra, one of my youngest sisters, who's recently turned seventeen... and so was having one of those growth spurts you get in your legs and arms before you start filling out and enter Maidenhood. She was wearing a floral skirt and shirt, patterned in black and white.

"Hey, Primara," I said with a full mouth.

She froze, and cocked her head at me. "You look like a mess," she said, bluntly, taking in my discarded breastplate. "Did someone shoot you again?"

I shook my head. "Nope. The armour was just a precaution. I had to talk to some unpleasant people down here. It's nice to see you, Primmy."

Her lips twitched. "Don't call me that," she said, sullenly. "And I was doing my homework before Mama called and told me I had to go down and talk to you. More homework. Again. Because they think that giving us more homework as punishment for things that weren't even our fault is a good thing. Stupid school. I'd rather do detention."

I sighed. Oh dear. "What are they blaming you for this time?" I asked.

She slumped down in the seat her mother had vacated, before wriggling around so she was lying on it sideways, legs hooked over the end. "It wasn't my fault! A stupid batarian brat with a snotty nose stole my omni, so I threw him over and took it back! And they're saying it's my fault and I shouldn't have done that! Can you believe it! So I'm on double homework for two weeks! When he's only got it for one week despite being a dirty four-eyed thief! Why should I get in trouble for protecting my stuff against that?"

I put down my cutlery and stretched out my arms. "An important part of school is learning how to deal with other people, even when they're dirty thieves," I said, putting my hands behind my head. "You have to learn to keep that urge to take people and slam them into walls until they stop moving and keep it inside, or they arrest you. And both me and your mother would be sad. I had to learn to keep my temper under control when I was little."

I still remember the time I broke the leg of my biotics tutor when she told me to throw her as hard as I could and implied it wouldn't be any good. The idiot hadn't braced herself properly, and I was furious from how she was being so patronising, so I brought out some of the things I'd copied from watching the advanced lessons with my older sisters in. She went through the window. Every biotic has to learn that when they get angry, they can hurt people and you don't want to do that just because you got angry.

"The trick is to always work on getting back at them, not getting angry," I added. "Think about it this way. Knocking him down could have damaged your omni, right?"

"... right."

"And you got in trouble because of it, right?"

"Yeah."

"Well, getting in trouble is bad. So you don't do things that get you in trouble. Now, on the other hand, stealing someone's omni is really bad. It's... actually a crime. But because you knocked him down, he can pretend to be the victim rather than a filthy criminal. So not only did your temper-flash risk losing something expensive of yours, but it meant that the real problem didn't get punished anywhere near bad enough. Think of it this way," I added, bluntly. "What would you have preferred? Being pushed down like that, or having to do an extra week of extra homework."

"The homework is worse," Primara conceded.

"And that's how the world works," I said, with a shrug. "Even when it's just a batarian or a salarian or an elcor... actually Primmy, don't lose your temper with elcor, it doesn't do much... but when it's one of that lot, still don't lash out. Just tell the teacher. And remember not to trust them in future."

The girl brooded for a bit, before unhooking one leg from the chair leg. "Well, that makes more sense," she said. "The teachers and Mama were all about how I need to do the right thing and calm down. But... I should do what Mama says. Even if... if I don't see the point."

"Yep," I said, loading the fork up again.

She sniffed at the air. "You stink of turian smoke," Primara announced loudly. "It's horrible."

"You're right, I do," I conceded. "I had to talk to someone in a turian bar."

"You don't stink of your normal cigarette smoke at all!"

"... well, that's certainly true."

"Were you drinking turian whiskey? You shouldn't do that, you know. The bottles are all labelled behind the bar and they've got warning labels about how only turians and quarians should drink them and how if anyone else does it they should go to the hospital and then there's the first aid kit which Mama taught me to use to help make someone who's drunken something they shouldn't throw up."

Oh, children. I'm fairly sure I was just as bad at the same age.

But before my interrogation could go on any longer, Erzala stepped promptly through the door. "Oh, Primara," she said, "good girl, you did listen to me and go see your aunt."

"Uh, yeah," her daughter replied sullenly. She beamed at me sunnily; rather more sunnily than we'd had in the normal conversation. "Me and her get on well. We talk about interesting things and she always has good advice that makes sense."

Erzala licked her lips. "I see," she said. "Anyway," she said, turning her attention to me, "I checked the logs, and... yes, I feel that you probably should know. There were two people there in the same private room as him."

"Who?" I asked.

"Solik Vanan, who was a salarian, and Queshtya Venimar," she said, voice dropping slightly.

"Who are they?" Primara asked loudly.

The first name wasn't familiar to me either, but the second... oh dear. Queshtya Venimar was the commander of one of the Eclipse subsidiaries operating and incorporated on Illium. If the quarian had been meeting with her...

... well, it just couldn't be good. I had no idea what it meant but that wasn't good news. What the hell could that purple-skinned bitch and her pet PMC psychopaths want from a quarian trading corp? No, it couldn't be that they just wanted something normal traded. Eclipse is larger than entire worlds. Like other Terminus companies, really. They have their own in-house trading companies, requisitions, the works.

Which meant that she wanted something out of the ordinary, if she was going to him. And if he was going to her... it meant something. But I'd be dammed if I knew what that was.

Well, that was a problem for tomorrow. Tonight, what I was going to do was finish my meal and drink, talk to my cousin and niece about stuff that didn't matter, and then I felt the best think to do would be to stumble home and pass out on my bed and sleep off the spacelag and the alcohol.

That was a good plan. Something I could understand. With no mysteries involved whatsoever.


	7. Chapter 7

When I woke the next day, the morning sunlight was like knives in my eyes. It usually is when I've been drinking heavily, and after I got back from Erzala's place I had admittedly downed an extra bottle. At the time, I had perfect logic on my side. It made sense for me to 'save up' on sleep by getting plenty of rest now. And it would help me reset my body clock.

Now I was paying the price for it. And my body was taking every chance to remind me of that.

Traitor.

Nevertheless, I swung myself out of bed, only to find that I had not actually been in bed and had fallen asleep on the ground. As a result, I ended up feeling like quite a fool, not least because I managed to whack my shin into a doorframe. Once I had finished writhing around on the floor in pain, I pulled myself to my feet, groaning. My eyeballs felt like something small and malevolent had drawn on them using a red hot needle as a stylus. I shed my clothes which I had apparently forgotten to take off the previous night, checked on my halkemari, and went and had a shower, which left me feeling at least somewhat asari rather than a walking corpse.

Have you ever been down to the lower levels of Illium, and been into a smoke-filled turian bar when you were down there? You end up with grime everywhere. Under my nails, up your nose, baked into your skin. Everywhere. The water ran a dirty grey for a while.

Naturally, one of the things that revealed itself to me when I stumbled down to my kitchen was that I hadn't been shopping since I got back to Illium. So there was basically nothing in the house. Well. There was a packet of dried noodles.

Eh. Good enough.

I wonder how the autotranslate handles 'noodles', actually. Oh well. I can categorically say we're the ones who invented the idea of making long thin things of dough, because we were eating them when other species were busy being puzzled by fire, clubbing themselves over the head, and running at big scary things yelling 'eat me! Maybe if you choke on me, I'll be able to kill you!'.

Which is... uh, right now for the quarians. Some reports suggest they might be able to grasp fire in the next few years, but the other things are still puzzling them.

As I crunched through them, I thought of two things. Firstly, I probably should have cooked them. But secondly and more importantly, I was thinking about the case. After the shower, and in the blindingly bright, headache-filled light of sobriety, I… still didn't have a feel for the case. Nothing added up. So I was looking for a quarian. He had contacts with the salarian mob and the Eclipse mercenaries. The person who was hiring me... I trusted her rather less far than I could throw her – mind you, that's not much, because I trust few people and I'm a fair biotic.

Perhaps he had fed himself to something big and scary in a hope of choking it to death. Nah. The most dangerous predators on asari are usually asari-sized, often because they actually are asari, and we can't eat quarians. So either he'd tried to feed himself to a sophontvorous turian serial killer – possibly out of some sick fetish – or this line of thought was completely useless.

Almost certainly the latter. That murderer over in Nos Praxis had been killed in a shoot-out, and how likely was it that there were two turian quarian-eating serial killers in a few years? Unless the new one was his protégé...

Okay, I'll stop. The main point was that I seemed to be caught up in something rather larger than just a missing persons case, and so needed to take care. If the salarian mob decided I was snooping, they might give me a warning. You know, a nice and simple break in, perhaps a beating.

There are certain rules to this kind of thing. Well, they're more like guidelines than rules, but that doesn't make them less true. And one of them is that resorting to lethal force changes the rules of the game. Sending some thugs to beat someone up is different to sending a krogan on combat steroids and quadrite to their house armed with a flamethrower. And deliberately killing the people who are trying to give you a beating gets you the latter.

I mean, not immediately. You normally have to go quite extreme to have people order that, but it's a definite chain of escalation which connects the two.

And no, that's never happened to me on Illium. I'm not _that_ annoying.

But if the Eclipse felt I was intruding, they'd probably just have me shot. I'd already pushed the line with them less than a year ago, so was on thin ice. And the Eclipse… they're asari. Maiden dominated at their lower levels. We go for the throat faster than other species, at any sign of vulnerability or threat. And their entire structure encourages pro-active go-getters to take actions which'll impress the Mothers and Matriarchs on their board of directors.

They're very asari in that way.

Hmm. Possibly I should acquire some defensive blackmail, before we went deeper into this case. More of it. I mean, some of my old stuff was out of date due to shifts in the organisation.

Putting on a pair of shades to protect my tired eyes from the disgusting morning sunlight, I left my apartment and began picking my way through the crowds and over the skybridges to my office. I do own a skycar, but I keep it in storage. It's pretty expensive to run them in Nos Astra, what with the tariffs on the use of the lanes, and have you seen how much they charge for parking slots? Anyway, by walking I could pick up something proper for breakfast which wasn't just uncooked noodles.

"So, it looks like someone's hung over," Tatyre drawled when I poked my head into her tech room, where she was doing something under a red light which was far too bright for my eyes. She paused. "And by 'someone', I mean you. You are the one who is hung over. And late. Which means the Late Jar is getting a deposit. From you. I was in three hours ago, thank you very much."

The Late Jar pays for the office cigarettes. I end up paying for most of them. Tatyre has an uncanny ability to show up even when she's been drinking the entire night before. Sometimes she doesn't go home. I suspected she'd been in even longer than three hours, based on local smoke density.

Me, I just wanted to slump down and groan into my desk – which has a nicely padded area to rest one's forehead on. And so I did so. Before Tatyre started sending me nagging emails to check my emails.

Bitch. Whatever happened to walking through to the other room to talk to someone?

'What?' I typed, bringing up a messenger.

'That's not very nice,' was the response which came back. 'You should be respecting me more. Here I am, slaving away while you show up late and hung over. You should treat me better.'

'Go suck on a gun,' I typed. 'What is it?'

'Asari. The most dignified and cultured race in the galaxy, and you are the one who takes the epitome of their virtues to their highest level. I bow before your grace and calm dignity. Oh, woe that I was ever born a batarian. But seriously. Got a lead for you – sending file. You can go follow it in the nice bright sunlight. Go work out a way to get the info; call me when you have a plan as you'll almost certainly need my help.'

My response to that probably wouldn't translate properly. It's hard to translate 'bashes head into keyboard'. Still, I pulled myself to my feet and started checking my gear while I read her notes. They were written with her customary mix of terseness, profanity, and casual insults, so I'll summarise.

In essence, someone had made a major transfer from one of the missing quarian's accounts on the day he went missing. I didn't want to know how Tatyre had found this, because it meant I was better protected legally from consequences. But she had, and now she thought it would probably be a good idea for me to find out who had done it.

The non-hung-over bit of my mind agreed with her. Hopefully, it would be our target and that meant we had a concrete location for him, and could follow him from that point. The hungover bit disagreed, of course, but I beat it down. It was not in possession of the full facts.

The place I had to check out was a banking terminal in the Agamen financial district, so that was where I went. I took a skybus to get there, mingling with the thronging masses of the lower classes of Illium. Though not the lowest classes, because the way Illium is designed, the very poorest live and work in the same tower, albeit rather lower down.

I'd dressed to blend in with them. Nothing too smart or too respectable. I was wearing one of my long coats, this time in a dark blue which I always feels matches my eyes, and which just coincidentally allows me to keep a protective vest underneath without it being too obvious I'm wearing one. Add a pistol in a pocket – a light holdout – and a rather heavier one under the coat on my hip, and I was ready for anything which came my way which didn't come in too large numbers, wear too much armour, get the drop on me, or all sorts of nasty intrusions of reality which get in the way of the phrase, 'I was ready for anything which came my way'.

Hey, it's not my fault reality has no respect for poetry.

The skybus stop is pretty close to my destination, so I piled off along with the weary-looking asari and turians in various company outfits. The black eyes of CCTV are everywhere here, gleaming and glittering in the sunlight and pooling in shadows. That's good all in all, and I called in Tatyre to tell her I'm here.

"Bully for you," she said. "I'll make you a medal," and hung up.

Whistling as I went, I found the public terminal the transaction had been made from. It wasn't exactly hard, as I had its address. It also appeared to be overwatched by several cameras, so there was a good chance that at least someone would have seen what had happened. I logged in at the terminal and checked one of the minor stock portfolios I have under a holding company, just to avert interest. And… well, see how my stocks were doing. Triggering my camera a few times, I mapped out the area and retired to a café with various corporate drones having early lunches.

"Kanay, leave the pot. I'll add milk if I want to," I ordered from the salarian behind the counter, and sat myself down in a corner where no one would be able to look over my shoulder. The prices here weren't exactly cheap, but it could have been worse. I entertained myself while waiting for my drink to cope by making snap judgements of the other clients in the café.

Well, the trio of two asari and a turian over in that corner were clearly corporate lackeys enjoying an early lunch on expenses. Expensive drinks, and from the glasses they weren't on their first ones. Same went for the party of five salarians sitting near the fish tank. They were drowning their sorrows, or, more accurately, they were drowning the sorrows that their account manager would probably be feeling when he got their expenses claim in.

The krogan who came in around a minute or so after I arrived… he was more interesting. Dressed in a suit, which would probably have been judged to be well-fitted if it was made for a species which wasn't a krogan, who can generally best hope for 'it was kind of draped over them' as a compliment. Sat with an asari, the two in quiet conversation. Maybe some kind of deal, maybe romance. Krogan are pretty stupid and have the misapprehension all too often that if they meld with an asari, they'll get krogan babies out of it. Nope. Doesn't work that way, quad-brain.

And then there was the strange little party sitting at the bar. Two asari, one turian, one volus, a dark-skinned human female who from her blue dress and the blue eyeliner she was wearing had the hots for asari – and yeah, from the looks of it she was the arm-candy of one of the asari from the way she was sitting on her lap – and two hanar. Posture was wrong for just drinks… they weren't doing this for fun. But they were being too raucous for a business meeting.

My eyes narrowed. Those suitcases which the asari and the turian were carrying… if I wasn't quite mistaken, they looked exactly like the kinds of armoured carry cases which one might keep a compact assault rifle in. But would one really bring one's stupid human arm-candy to something one was expecting violence on?

"Tatyre," I radioed in. "ID check on that party… also, the Maiden and the krogan there. They're standing out. Priority on the first; they may be armed."

"Tell you if I find anything," my verbose and sweet batarian co-worker told me, as my drink arrived.

Carefully, I poured myself a cup, and began to sip at it. Placing it down, I brought up today's papers from my omnitool, and loaded a business one. Yes, that should mean no one looks at me. I'm just an asari on Illium, perfectly innocently having a drink while I read the financial papers. People do that kind of thing around the financial district. And hey, maybe I might make a few calls while I'm here. Nothing to see here, move along.

Time passed as I read the articles, checked up on the companies who owned the buildings on which the cameras overlooking the terminal resided – Eclipse front companies? – and kept an eye on the room. It tends to do that, even when doesn't want it to. A few more groups came in and sat themselves down… an asari Mother and her cusp-of-Maidenhood daughter – probably arranging an internship; a pair of vorcha in suits (who looked even worse than the krogan, although that was because they looked to be pretty cheap suits); a quarian deep in somewhat desperate conversation with an overweight turian.

"I have IDs for the first party," Tatyre said, my comms chiming. "Small arms traders – links to Heliotrope, Blue Suns, Vallanhaffan… they get around. Advertising manufacturing licences."

"The armoured cases may be sample boxes," I said back, softly.

"Maybe. Still looking for IDs on the others. And trying to handle other data recovery."

"Fine," I said, pouring myself another cup. Motion caught my eye, and I looked up to see the asari who had been drinking with the krogan rising, and begin to pick her way over to me. Perfectly idly, I adjusted the set of my coat, and made sure the holdout in my pocket would draw cleanly.

"Hello," she said, in a mellifluous voice, resting her hands on my table where I could see them. Face to face, I could pick up more things about her, and one of them was the fact that she knew what she was doing when she put her hands where I could see them – and she knew what I would be assuming if she didn't put them where I could see them.

That worried me. I don't like strangers knowing things about me. That's what I do about them. She was dressed in practical clothing – smart, but I could see she was wearing a well-supporting bra under her harsh shirt and from the sit of her well-tailored jacket while she wasn't wearing solid armour, she had something else on underneath it. Little younger than me, and in better shape; I'm not entirely focussed on combat and personal fitness, and drink and smoke too much. She tried to hide it under her loose clothes, but she was muscled.

Huntress, was my immediate response. With an edge of 'mercenary'. Private security, maybe.

There was a look in her eyes, too, which suggested she was taking me in. Her eyes lingered on the pocket I had the holdout in, and flashed over the way my coat suggested I was wearing an armourplate vest.

All that passed in a second, as I said, "Hi," back. "I'm sorry, but do I know you?"

"I don't think so," the other Maiden said with a shrug. "I'm sorry, but you look lonely here. Me and my companion would be honoured if you would join us at our table – and I suspect the bar staff would be pleased that you are no longer occupying a five person table on your own."

I deliberately paused, warming my hands against my kanay and checking it would still be warm enough to seriously inconvenience if splashed in her eyes. But I'd chosen this table for a reason, and wasn't about to be dislodged from my favoured zone. "If you're looking for more table space, please, join me," I offered, fixing her with an entirely fake smile. Her accent… slightly rhotic, hint of emphasis on her fricatives, formal register in a way which seemed natural… for those of you who have neglected your study of asari languages and how they're connected to class, that's all a sign of coming from a large, rich family. Like me, too. Not just some Illium fast-breeder grabbed up as cannon fodder.

"Why, that would be most kind of you," she replied, sounding far too happy for my peace of mind. "I will ask my companion if he wishes to move," she added in that obnoxiously proper manner, trotting back to her krogan.

"Tatyre," I hissed down the line, "get me an ID on this one right now. Something's happening." I glanced out the entrance to the café. An aircar had just pulled up, but no one had got out. Coincidence? Or not? I wasn't sure. What about those suited vorcha? Linked? Were they just here for drinks, were they were on suspicious business, or were they here for me? My heart was beating on overdrive and my body was going into full pounce/skulk mode.

I was doing very admirably to keep my cup of kanay steady as I sipped from it. And completely concealed the fact that I was considering how hard I'd have to throw it in her face to be sure of taking out at least one eye.

"Oh, he said yes," she said, trotting back, as the lumbering krogan pulled himself out of his seat and smoothed down his jacket, before making his way across the room. "Let me just get the waiter for another round of orders… we're the ones intruding on you, so they're on me! What do you want?"

That was how I met Rialenzia Asreadi. And I have to say, it was probably hate at first sight, at least from my end.

I detest constantly cheerful people. Especially the ones with _her_ proclivities.


	8. Chapter 8

Heart beating like a drum, I tried my very best not to give away the panic which was consuming me. I hate being cornered. I hate people knowing too much about me. I hate being put in places where I'm at a disadvantage. I hate people who are too cheerful. And all these pet hates seemed to be coming true right then.

"Should I have aldema, or is that too much?" my unwanted guest said, her tone halfway between talking to herself and asking me. "Can I really justify it? I mean, breakfast was only a few hours ago, but I only had something light and it's really good here. But it's rather high fat. And I don't walk enough. Hmm. It really is rather good. You know, their large is rather large. It'd be enough for two people."

"I only intended to have a drink," I said to her. "Why not ask your friend?"

She gave me a sunny grin. She was very attractive, but there was an edge of artificiality to her beauty. It was too perfect. She'd had cosmetic surgery by my reckoning, although it must have been very good – and very expensive – for me to be not certain. "Oh, he'll have steak, as usual," she said.

"I like it blue," the krogan said, his voice a deep rumble. "The tang of cyanonitrates is something to die for. And you asari would."

"And that's why I can't share plates with him," the Maiden said. "I'm Rialenzia Asreadi, by the way. And you are…"

"Not very talkative," I said. "I'm sorry, but I was having a drink here. In peace. And quiet."

"Oh, I'm so sorry, Notvery," she said, in a voice which most people would have had problems telling if she was being serious. Not me. I could pick up the slight shift in the upper registers, the slight elongation of her /oʊ/ dipthong. "That's a peculiar name; did it come from your sire's side of the family?"

And what her voice told me was that the bitch was playing with me.

"How long do you feel this meeting will last?" I asked.

The Maiden smiled at me. "Meeting?" she asked. "Why, we're just sharing a table."

"Please," I said, flatly. "Don't insult my intelligence. You know who I am, you know what I do, and you came in here shortly after I showed up. Who are you and who do you represent?"

Her hand went to her mouth in a way which only confirmed my suspicions that she – like me – was from an old, rich family. "So rude," she said. "But I suppose there is something to say for brusqueness, isn't there? Hakar?"

"Oh, please, don't bring him into things," I drawled. "Can't you see he's very busy with the menu?" I didn't _say_ 'there are lots of long, hard words in it', but I certainly thought it, and my smirk was enough that she could read that particular train of thought.

"Most amusing," the krogan said, glaring at me. "You think you're funny. I like funny people."

Oh my. A krogan who had mastered the art of saying things in a threatening manner even when the contents of the sentence were not threatening. I could tell I was dealing with a real genius here. A veritable literary master. I should be careful, or he might even start reciting poetry at me. Or rip my arms off. Considering the cultural awareness of even relatively sophisticated krogan, the disarming might be considered the lesser punishment.

My guest clapped her hands together. "You know, I think I'll order a diet portion of aldema," she exclaimed. "I'd forgotten they did smaller portions. And if you're not going to choose, I'll just order one for you!"

"There's no need to do that," I said quietly. I sipped my kanay, swirling it around in the cup.

"Of course there isn't a need!" she said. "I'm doing it to be nice. You do know about that, yes?" She waved at the waiter, who came over attentively. "Ah… yes! We'll have two diet portions of the aldema nabisca, and… Hakar?"

"Veldon steak, medium rare, and a side portion of mixed vegetables," the krogan rumbled. "And I expect real veldon. If the glands aren't oozing properly, I'll be making a…" ominous pause, "formal complaint."

Gosh. This was a smart krogan. He'd mastered posturing like a two-bit thug, rather than just telling the staff that he'd tear off their heads. Soon he might even be resorting to sarcasm.

"As you wish, sir," the waiter said, making a few notes on her omnitool. "Will that be all?"

"No, thank you very much," my unwanted guest said. She let the staff go, and then rested her hands on the table, smiling. "Anyway, my dear Notvery," she said, apparently thinking she was funny, "I believe we should have just the smallest of talks. As I said before, I am Rialenzia Asreadi, and I'm here on behalf of certain clients of mine. Professionally, I'm a client-facing representative, employed to handle low-level affairs and provide negotiated solutions to conflicts of interest," she said with a sunny smile.

'Wetworks lawyer' may not have been what she said, but it was what I heard. And that was bad news, because I hadn't heard of her before, and I try to keep up with the names in the field. Wetworks lawyers are, for those of you who don't operate in certain fields, a pretty common phenomenon when you deal with large corporations who engage in activities which would be… less than legal in C-space. At least the way asari do it, most of them are basically high-class leg-breakers. People who've got law degrees, but whose job also requires the huntress training most of them have. Like how to smash a kneecap.

Oh, most of them seldom break your legs personally unless things have gone very wrong. They can, but they have people they pay to do the messy things, hiding behind corporate veils and plausible deniability. But legs still get broken if you don't accede to their formally-issued cease-and-desists obtained from some bought legal figure.

And the others? They don't consider it a failure. They consider leg-breaking to be a gentle warning. From the way the Maiden sitting at my table was built, the fact that I hadn't heard of her before, and the way I couldn't read her expression – and I'm pretty good at that – something told me she was the second kind. The kind who are basically cold-blooded killers operating under a thin veneer of law, who give you a single warning before you have an accident.

You know, like Justicars, only smarter, more subtle and without the ritual transgenderism.

I don't judge them for that, of course. At least they're not as violently psychopathic as Justicars and give you a warning rather than murdering you straight-off. They're professionals, not self-appointed vigilante freaks.

She was just so damn cheerful. It made it hard to get a read off her. And _that_ was something I judged her for. Harshly.

"I can't imagine why such a talk would be necessary," I said, calmly. The noise outside rose, as a group of tourists passed by.

"Oh dear," she said, with a mock frown of sorrow. "My dear Notvery, I don't think you're that unimaginative. Indeed, I think quite highly of you, from your reputation as an As'koni."

Well, fuck. Was this actually not my fault for once? Was I caught up in one of my grandmother's games?

"Indeed," she continued, "I'm sure you've found lots of ways already why someone like little old me wants to talk to you, and you're trying to narrow down why in particular I'm chatting to you, like this, right now. I'm certainly not implying that you could possibly be involved in criminal activity." She smiled, widely and apparently genuinely. "In fact, I'm giving you a wonderful chance to avoid that."

… okay, probably my fault. In some way.

"I see you're still refusing to name your client," I observed.

"Dear, dear," she said. "Notvery, as we both know we're both under the client confidentiality laws of Nos Astra here. It's more than our jobs are worth to give them away without the express prior consent of our respective employers." She shook her head. "I just couldn't do something that unethical with a clean conscience."

"It wouldn't be a wise decision," the krogan rumbled, adding to my suspicions that she employed him as part of her comic act. A cheerful, allegedly witty asari and a somewhat-cultured krogan henchman. How positively hilarious.

Ha. Ha.

The food arrived. I didn't touch it. Meanwhile, M. Asreadi elegantly dug in with a long two-pronged fork, while her krogan henchman got to work with all the grace and elegance of a blender.

"Please, do try it," she told me warmly. "It really is excellent."

"I am quite fine," I told her, my voice fine.

She shrugged. "Your loss," she told me. "Well, if you're not going to be _sociable_ , Notvery, well…" she tapped her omnitool, and a message arrived on mine.

"How did you get my number?" I asked.

She swallowed, and coughed. "Dear, dear me," she said. "You're publicly listed, you know. There's no need to be quite so paranoid. One might even think you had something to hide."

Yes. Say that for any watchers. Because she had just sent it to me on a private number, the bitch. She'd just told me she knew one of my private numbers, and that meant she probably had the line bugged. It's what I'd do.

This was disproportionate, I though sourly. This was the kind of assets that a megacorp might throw at someone who was a real problem. She'd… she'd have to have got a bought judge to issue wiretap authorisation, and that isn't cheap. The standard cost for buying off a judge for a wiretap wasn't something most people would throw around casually. And I'd have been tipped off about a court order allowing that, because I had contacts in the offices of most of the commonly bought judges.

Did I miss it when I was off planet, or was I looking at things the wrong way? Maybe she was going extralegal too, and just relying on the aesthetic of 'I'm a high paid megacorp wetworks lawyer' so I'd assume she had legal backing. Rather than, you know, just the backing of whoever was paying her, and whatever assets she had herself.

But at least that way if she shot me, it'd be illegal. Fat comfort there.

The thing which she'd sent me was what I'd expected. "Blah blah blah, non-compete clause, blah blah blah, hire your firm on a zero hour retention contract, blah blah blah," I said, quirking my brow at her. "Blah blah blah legal rights and privilege of Nos Astra, attached legal services of M. Rialenzia Asreadi to defend contract against legal challenges, blah blah blah."

"Ah? Has the file been corrupted? I don't believe I used the word 'blah' at all in it," she said with a smile. Her fork tapped against the side of her plate as she took me in. Her fingernails were cut short and entirely practically, I noted.

"I do note that you managed to produce an entire hiring contract which entirely fails to mention who my firm would be hired by," I remarked, flicking my fingers through the file. "And no, a painfully obvious shell company which was incorporated… yesterday doesn't count."

"Corporate confidentiality, I'm afraid."

"No doubt."

Her pet krogan made a rumbling noise. I thought for a moment it was some disgusting biological byproduct of a cyanonitrate-rich meal, but no, he was just clearing his throat. "It'd be a shame if commercially confidential information was to escape," he said. "That'd be a security breach. We're not fans of them."

Wow. And he'd managed that shallow and clichéd threat all without the words written out phonetically for him on his omnitool. Such talent. Such flair. Truly I was dealing with a savant here.

I leaned back in my seat, adjusting the fit of my deep blue coat. "Purely hypothetically," I said, "if I were to reject your offer and point out that this attempt to drive me away from a case is unusual enough to draw my interest… well, I have an academic interest in what you'd do then."

Her lips twisted. It was just for a fraction of a second, but she'd flickered from the bland smile. And then she was smiling again. "Well, nothing at all," she said. "I would be very disappointed, of course, but that would be purely your choice. My client's instructions are merely that I am to present you with this offer. After this, I will need to refer to them to consult for further instructions."

"Mmm," I said. "Well, don't let me interrupt your meal. I'm just going to read this contract. In depth."

M. Asreadi nodded. "But you're letting your aldema go cold," she said sadly.

"That's a sacrifice I'm willing to make," I said, over the blender-noise of the krogan henchman masticating its way through the steak.

That at least gave me some time to come to a conclusion, while the two of them ate. I couldn't get away with killing them here, and for all that she pretended, I didn't think for a moment that her employer would back off. They'd clearly spent a lot of money on this 'offer'. Yet not enough money to make it worthwhile for me to break a contract. That bit didn't make sense. It implied that they were planning to kill me anyway – which meant they weren't playing the usual game – or that they felt that my current employer was going to be in a position where she wasn't going to be in a position where she could keep on paying me.

Not that I would mourn Mara. Far from it. But if I backed off from every case here in Nos Astra just because someone threatened me, I'd never get paid.

So I'd play for time, try to find out who her employer was, and consider what to do next. I poured over the contract while she ate, looking for anything which might have been a clue. Unfortunately, there were no give-away non-compete clauses.

"Well, obviously I can't take unilateral action here," I told her. "I'll need to consult with my partner before I can accept this, and legally my firm will need to negotiate for release from any contracts I may or may not be party to which have their own non-compete clauses."

"Oh, I quite understand," she told me, flapping her hand at me. "Please, please, take your time."

"Here's my business card," I said, handing her a holochip. We were leaving on acceptable terms, after all. I'd been intimidated by how much money she was spending on me. I knew how to play the game, and sometimes you just had to fold. We were all friends, me and that smug smiling bitch and her henchman.

"We know where your offices are," said the krogan clown.

"And presumably you also know where I live and where the children I will have some day will go to school," I told him drily. "Next time, M. Asreadi, can you not bring your pet to the table? At least until he can keep his compulsive desire to make thuggish comments under control. I do understand he's a krogan, but in Nos Astra it's traditional to guise your threats in legal paperwork."

"Most amusing," the krogan rumbled. "I will remember you, Miss."

Rialenzia Asreadi smiled at me widely. "Oh dear!" she said, in mock sorrow, "I guess you don't trust me. Well, hopefully you'll change your mind." She flapped her hand at me. "I hope you'll make the right choice," she told me earnestly. "And don't mind Hakar. He's just a big soppy. His bark is worse than his bite."

"Be seeing you," said her crony, flashing his mouth full of diamond-capped teeth.

I saw her out, downed my kanay, and then settled my tab. Leaving a polite tip, I made my way out, trailing M. Asreadi. Of course, naturally she dumped the business card as soon as she could, like she was afraid that I'd attached a listening device to it. Sensible.

After all, I had.

I didn't mind that, though. I'd deposited another bug on her sleeve where my hand had brushed against it. And that was coming in loud and clear, its signal piggybacking on the commercial comms network. Thank you, Tatyre, you chain-smoking bitch.

I lit up myself as I left the café, linking up to the covert channel of the bug. The location tracker was telling me that she'd headed to a skycar garage, and the sound of her getting into a vehicle indicated I wouldn't be able to trail her without my own vehicle. I wasn't prepared to go that far, yet.

"Shh, Hakar," I heard her say. "I'm reporting in." There was a chime. "Ma'am. I made contact, as per your orders."

The translation probably lost all the nuance, so I'll explain this to speakers of inferior languages. Rialenzia Asreadi used the variant one would use to respectfully address a senior asari who was either a Matriarch or a rich and respected Mother who was your superior. Grammatically it should only be used for Matriarchs, but when flattering your employer, there are occasions when it might be advisable to do so. There's no other species you'd use that for. It meant she was being employed by an asari.

"She's considering it, ma'am. I suspect she's playing for time, but she hasn't rejected it out of hand." M. Asreadi hummed to herself. "I am quite aware of her reputation, and we must consider the risk that she is operating under direct orders from Matriarch As'koni. The As'koni are a major player in the huntress-industrial complex, and notorious for their... ahem, aggressive pre-emptive direct action litigation. As your designated legal advisor, I must recommend that…"

A long pause.

"With respect, as your legal advisor, I cannot condone extralegal activity," Rialenzia Asreadi said perfunctorily. "You have me retained under a Maldean Veil contract at this present time, and thus I am obliged to request that you perform no actions which breach the laws of your current jurisdiction."

A pause.

"No, no, I understand, but I do not believe your… ah, prospective employee will react well to violence. I must remind you again, the As'koni are a close-knit and exceedingly vindictive family, and in the hypothetical case you were to attempt an extralegal solution – which I must legally advise against – there would be further ramifications."

A pause.

"With all due respect, ma'am, I am merely making you aware of your options within the legal framework. Of course I would not presume to speak to you of such matters on my current contract, save to inform you of the aforementioned illegality of extralegal means… yes. Thank you, ma'am." She hung up, and sighed.

"Wonderful," her krogan henchman rumbled. "So Venimar isn't in a patient mood."

"Don't talk to me about it," M. Asreadi snapped. She took a deep breath, and sighed. "Sorry," she said. "No, she isn't. She was very much 'I heard you were the best' and 'what am I paying you for?'."

"She's not paying us enough. That bitch was a cold fish, but I don't want a major family after my quads. If Venimar wants extra services, she'll need to negotiate a new contract. One with a much larger risk premium."

"Yes," the asari said darkly. "Yes, if she's going to be rash, she is."

Oh. Well, well, well, I thought, exhaling a cloud of smoke. So M. Asreadi was on retainer from Queshtya Venimar. How interesting. So the same Eclipse manager who had been meeting with the missing quarian in my cousin's bar was the one who was trying to push me off the case.

First question. How did she know I'd taken the case? Second question. Why was she so worried that she'd send a rather expensive wetworks lawyer to try to drive me off – and not even give her more than one meeting to get results? Third question. How long was it going to be until she escalated?

The answer to question three was 'approximately ninety minutes', as it turned out.


End file.
